Pawan, Ayush star jn CCBW "Protect your Queen" Awareness Campaign Chess Tournament; Aiman Best WomanL
Lucknow: Senior Lucknow player Pawan Batham, and 14-year-old Ayush Saxena from Shahjahanpur, tied for the first place at the "Protect your Queen" chess tournament at Hotel De Global Park, Nirala Nagar, today. Both scored 5.5/6 points and all credit to Ayush for drawing with top seed Pawan. The winner's trophy went to Pawan on tiebreak score. Aiman Akhtar was Best Woman with 4.5 points followed by Pooja Kashyap and Vineeta Agarwal.
Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) organised the tournament as part of a campaign launched by 13-year-old Prisha Garg of Kunskapsskolan School. Prisha says, "Chess is a sport where boys and girls can compete at the same level but, sometimes, boys tease and harass when they lose to a girl."
She added, "Not just in chess, in society as a whole, my campaign is not about punishing errant boys but about creating awareness in society. Chess is a great way to say girls are capable as well." India Women's Chess No. 2, Dronavalli too has reported being harassed at the international level.
Special prizes at the event included: Best Chess Dad 1st and 2nd Kuldeep Kumar and Kanishka Deva Rastogi. Best Chess Mom was Shweta Bharti. Best chess-theme-royalty dress prize went to Arun Singh who wore a dazzling turban to the tournament.
Chief guest Garima Gupta, educationist and Young Indian Scientist, awarded by late president Abdul Kalam, gave away the prizes.
*Final Standings*
1st-2nd Pawan Batham, Ayush Saxena 5 pts (on tiebreak) 3rd Arun Singh 5, 4th Sameer Mukherjee 4.5 pts, 5th-8th Krishna Tejas T, Nikhar Saxena, Harshit Arora, Abhishek Srivastava 4 pts 9th Sudhir Verma 3.5 pts 10th-12th Aniket Mohan, Parth Bhalla, Vinay.
*Best Veteran* 1st Ajit Kumar Srivastava 4 pts, 2nd UB Singh 3.5 pts
*U15* 1st Arnav Tripathi 4 pts, 2nd Prisha Garg 2 pts
*13* 1st Atharv Thapliyal 4 pts, 2nd Arjun Garg 3.5 pts
*U9* 1st Aja Thapliyal 2.5 pts, 2nd Yuvaan Grover 2 pts.
Posted in: chess club,lucknow chess,respect girls
