KK Khare wins Krishan Baldev Mahana Chess Memorial for Veterans

Lucknow: Seasoned veteran player, KK Khare of Lucknow, won the Krishan Baldev Mahana Memorial Chess for Veterans (those born 1962 and before) with a perfect score here today. Defending champion Qamar Naim was second.

Vinayak Rao, Lucknow, returning to play after many years, dropped a point only to Khare, to be third on tie-break along with Balgovind Awasthi, Kanpur.

The highlight of the tournament was an exciting game between Vimal K Bhatia, Lucknow, playing White vs Qamar Naim. Bhatia was winning all the way in the Rook endgame for the title but blundered.

Ms Rocio Perez from Mexico City was chief guest. Winners received trophies and all players were felicitated with a shawl, pen, framed group photo.

This is the only chess tournament for those aged 60 and above in India hosted regularly by Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) with free entry and lunch. Hopefully, many such tournaments will now start happening. Chess is surely an amazing sport for senior citizens.

The children of the club also got a chance to play with the senior chess players of Lucknow, Kanpur, Bahraich, Bareilly, Jhansi, Allahabad, Orai and Varanasi.

Final results
Kapil Kumar Khare 5pts, Qamar Naim, Vinayak Rao, Bhatia Vimal K, Balgovind Awasthi 4 pts, Mohd. Sabir Siddiqui, Basant Singh 3.5 pts, Shakiluddin, Santosh Kumar Srivastava, Sharad Sharma, Kamlesh Kumar Kesharwani, RK Gupta, KM Shukla, Kranti Kumar Gupta 3 pts, UB Singh, Shaikh Zafar Ullah 2.5 pts, RS Kashyap, Rambabu Sachan, Mool Chand, RP Gupta, Zahid Ali, Harish Srivastava, Ajit Kumar Srivastava, Ambuj Agarwal, Anurag Srivastava, Aslam Ahmad, Jitendra Singh Saxena, Mahana S, Parashuram, Deep Saxena, Dhruv Narayan 2 pts.

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Chandigarh Chess Assn Shocks Chess Players with No Prizes, High Entry Fee

Chandigarh, Nov 15: Chandigarh chess players were in for a shock Wednesday when the Chandigarh Chess Association (CSA) announced a tournament with no prizes yet high entry fee.

Senior local players got together to petition the Chandigarh Chess Association and the All-India Chess Federation against the "step-motherly" treatment. A senior player, on condition of anonymity, said, "Right next door, Punjab organised a similar tournament with prizes. The entry fee was similar. But, the prizes and playing conditions somewhat justified the tournament entry fee."

Another young player's father added, "An association selection tournament is not a privately organised event. We can always skip a private organiser's tournament if we don't like the conditions or are not happy with prizes etc. But this is a bonafide, duly supported by the government and All-India Chess Federation tournament. The purpose of the association is to promote chess in the region. They get federation and government financial support. A local player does not wish to skip this  selection tournament as it's an "official event" and has its own prestige so as to speak. They can hold a separate open tournament to earn money." 

Just justify the entry fee and the very organising of the tournament for professional players with cash prizes and at least trophies and certificates for kids, asks Chandigarh Chess community. Associations have resources why not help players? Players need voting rights and a say. If it's only selection trial then reduce the entry fee to nominal or free as is the norm.

He said, "They must make the event worthwhile for all chess players. What will happen is only children of certain academies will play and get to represent Chandigarh at the Nationals. No professional senior player will attend this tournament. The organisers are possibly happy with no senior chess players turning up to play."

Another player added, "What happens is that no genuine professional player from Chandigarh will find it worth the effort. Children from private academies will be sent here and asked to play. The parents, in fear of being banned or sidelined, will send their kids paying the high entry fee for no returns. Who will gain? Eventually, the top-four players going to the Nationals will not be the true representatives of Chandigarh chess players. It's like India team for Olympiad is selected by bypassing all top Grandmasters."

Senior players added, "More than anything else, we ask why an association exists if not to promote chess? Why elections have not been held for years to allow some chess to happen here? There has not been an open rating chess tournament in Chandigarh by the association for at least several years. Why does this association exist? Just to report to All-India Chess Federation that it has conducted the mandatory selection tournament and then sleep for the entire year?"

"The so-called main academies of the city will go on fleecing some parents with fake promises of building their children's career and insist that the kids go play this tournament. In effect, nothing will happen. Unless real chess promoters are part of the association, the sport cannot be promoted across the country. Any players who do something, succeed without association aid."

The letter sent to the All-India Chess Federation by senior chess players of Chandigarh reads as follows: 

The 32nd Chandigarh Chess Championship, run by the Chandigarh Chess Association for qualifying in the MPL Senior National Chess Championship 2022, is scheduled to take place at Chandigarh Baptist School in Sector-45D, 160047, from November 25 to November 27, 2022.

The cost of the event is INR 700 plus INR 250 for AICF Registration.

Even with appropriate entrance costs, the tournament's lack of any prize money worries us. The lack of monetary incentives for winners considerably reduces the likelihood of recruiting professional chess players who rely on the game for their living.

Chess competition, training, and play all come with their own set of costs. Without prizes, an official AICF chess tournament is unable to draw professional players since it cannot cover the costs of training and participating in the event.

THE PLEA
We kindly request that you look into the situation and take the necessary steps to guarantee that the fair play requirements are adequately followed in the upcoming competition for the benefit of chess.

Comments on this report by our staff writer may be emailed to editor@blackandwhiteindia.com

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Lucknow's Arif Ali wins CCBW Chess Open, Jusfica top Woman Player

Lucknow: Arif Ali won the 2nd CCBW Open Chess here today with a consistent performance in a field of more than 100 top chess players from Varanasi, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Allahabad and Lucknow.

Vikash Nishad was second with a draw against Ali in an Alekhine-game converting into a French pawn structure. Eleven-year-old Sanyam Srivastava was the kid hero holding rated second seed Pawan Batham to a draw and making it to the main prize list.

Jusfica Lilium Lobo from Lucknow was Best Woman and Dinesh Sinha from Kanpur won the Veteran +60 Section. Among the juniors, u-13 section, Prisha Garg from Lucknow was Best Girl and Arnav Tripathi was Best Boy. Aaryav Yogesh was top scorer in the u-10 category. 

Chess Club Black & White hosted the tournament with free lunch and international-standard playing conditions at a city hotel. Mrs Agni Shikha Verma, Chairperson of the Agni Shikha Karn Educational Charitable Trust and Principal of AWADH ITI, gave away the prizes. 

*Top Prize Winners*

Open 1st-15th: Arif Ali, Vikash Nishad 6.5, Gufran 6, Pawan Batham 5.5, Anchal Rastogi, Sayeed Ahmad, Shashi Prakash, Vishal Bharti, Rajendra Kumar, Mayank Pandey, Vimal Bhatia,  KK Kulhary, Ayush Saxena, Akash Srivastava, Udit Gupta 5.

Women 1st-3rd: Jusfica Lilium Lobo, Aiman Akhtar, Shweta Bharti

Veterans +60 1st-3rd Dinesh Sinha, KK Khare, RK Gupta 5

Under-9 1st-2nd Aaryav Yogesh, Mahir Agarwal 

Rating Categories 1st-2nd

Unrated - 1099: Shubh Srivastava, Suneel Kumar

1100-1299: Abhishek Kumar Mishra, Sanyam Srivastava 

1300-1499: Vinayak Singh Yadav, Shani Kumar Soni

1500-1699: Ravishanker, Sunny Mathew

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Chessable Research Awards for Varsity Students: Apply before October 1

Chessable, a leading platform in chess improvement and part of the Play Magnus Group, is seeking undergraduate and graduate students to apply for the Chessable Research Awards.

The Chessable Research Awards are an initiative to develop our understanding of how chess can benefit our lives, how we can improve our knowledge of the game, and how we can understand other phenomena, both within and outside of the chess world.

University students from all fields of study, such as cognitive psychology, education, literature, history, computer science, etc., are invited to apply.

Examples of relevant topics include, but are not limited to, how playing chess impacts society or personal development, methods for improving the memorization of chess theory, the gender gap in chess participation, using ideas from chess to solve real-world problems, etc.

Chessable's Chief Science Officer Dr. Alexey Root says, “With the Chessable Research Awards, Chessable hopes to encourage existing chess researchers and to help launch new chess research projects worldwide.”

Winning students and their faculty research sponsors will receive monetary awards and publicity in Chessable blog posts and newsletters. Three cycles of awards per year are planned. Applications for this first cycle are due Saturday, October 1, 2022, for research to be conducted during the spring semester of 2023.

To successfully apply, each student must have a faculty research sponsor, who fills out a separate application.

For more information about the Chessable Research Awards and the link to apply, visit: https://www.chessable.com/blog/chessable-research-awards

Applicant questions and media requests for interview/comment should go to Chessable’s Chief Science Officer or to the Science Project Manager at the addresses below:

Dr. Alexey Root, Chief Science Officer: alexey.root@chessable.com
Karel van Delft, Science Project Manager: karel@chessable.com

For more information about the Chessable science team and its initiatives, visit https://www.chessable.com/science

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Bahraich's Qamar Naim wins CCBW +60 Chess for Veterans in Lucknow

Lucknow: Seventy-year-old Qamar Naim, of Bahraich won the CCBW +60 Seniors' Chess Lucknow today with a blazing 6.5/7 performance. In second and third place were sixty-nine-year old Balgovind Awasthi from Kanpur and eighty-one-year old RK Gupta from Jhansi. The oldest player was eighty-two year old Kranti Kumar Gupta who came to play especially from Bareilly. He set the pace in the initial rounds.

"What an inspiring tournament," said Chief Arbiter, Hemant Sharma. "These are the real masters of chess as unlike us they have had no access to computers. Today's kids have an app of double the world champion's strength on their cellphones to learn from."

Winners, players and Team CCBW with chief guest with Chief Guest Mahamilind Lal, Director Finance, State Nutrition Mission, in Lucknow, on Sunday at The Hotel Golden Apple, in Mahanagar.

Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) hosted all senior chess players of the state in the rapid seven-round 10+5 time control event. "Play chess to stay young and fit. At sixty, free from duties, you can now travel and play. The world's oldest Grandmaster was recently 100 years-old Yuri Averbakh of Russia. We want such inspiring seniors in India as well," said UP champion, 2002, Dr Junaid Ahmad, director, CCBW.

Naim's extremely attacking play was matched by top-seed Vimal Bhatia of Lucknow, but the latter missed out several games in time pressure. Lakhimpur's Krishna Murari Verma started very well but stepped back in the second half of the tournament. In the game of Lucknow stalwarts, KK Khare was winning all the way but blundered a full rook and the game to Prabhat Adhaulya.

Final top standings: Qamar Naim 6.5 pts, Balgovind Awasthi 6 pts, RK Gupta, KK Kulhary, KM Verma, KK Khare 5 pts, Prabhat Adhaulya 4.5 pts, Munir Ahmad, MS Siddiqui, Vimal Bhatia, Harish Kumar Srivastava, RS Kashyap, Sharda Prasad Pandey, UB Singh 4 pts, Shamim Ahmad, Kamlesh Kumar Kesharwani, Deep Saxena, RP Gupta, Phoolchand Basore, Anurag Srivastava, Ambuj Agarwal, Moolchand, KK Gupta, Vinayak Rao, S Mahana, Ajit Kumar Srivastava, Rajesh Sharma 3 pts.

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Harshit 1st in u1800 at Belgrade Chess Open, gains 218 fide rating points

Lucknow, July 30: Heartiest Congratulations to CCBW kid Harshit Amarnani, Lucknow, for winning first prize in the u1800 category (Euro 100) and gaining a fantastic 218 fide rating points in Belgrade, Serbia today! He just concluded the Belgrade Open - Vozhdovac Trophy 2022 with a score of 6/9. Harshit definitely has his parents, Prashant and Suvidha, to thank. Sacrificing their own time and work to help him pursue his chess dreams. His sister, Himmika, a tennis player, always the naughty support. Himmika too is a chess player in her own right! 

He has trained with UP Champion Dr Junaid Ahmad, district champion Arif Ali at Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow (CCBW) and WIM Mrunalini Kunte at the Kunte Chess Academy, Pune.

His score includes a draw with Fide Master Nikolic Boban, Women's International Master Rucha Pujari, and International Master Andrijevic Milan. It also includes a win over Fide Master Maric Dragan.

Harshit's rating goes to 1788 in the new FIDE rating list making him the top-rated junior in Uttar Pradesh. He is already in the top-1000 rated juniors in Asia.

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