Pairings/Results Boys
Round 9 on 2010/07/02 at 1500 hrs
Bo. No. Name FED Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Name FED Rtg No.
1 4 Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh IND 2050 6½ 0 – 1 7 FM Ghosh Diptayan IND 2133 3
2 10 Rakesh Kumar Nayak IND 1970 7 0 – 1 6½ FM Girish A Koushik IND 2276 1
3 20 Sreyan Bhowmick IND 1877 6½ 1 – 0 6 G Yogesh IND 2002 8
4 6 Aravindh chithambaram Vr IND 2014 6 ½ – ½ 6 Debankan Dhara IND 1873 21
5 14 Ayush Jugele IND 1912 6 ½ – ½ 6 Narayanan S L IND 1964 12
6 27 K Praneeth Surya IND 1831 6 1 – 0 6 Siddarth M IND 1961 13
7 26 Prasannaa S IND 1844 5½ 0 – 1 5½ Karthikeyan Murali IND 2011 7
8 33 Pranav Vijay IND 1797 5½ 0 – 1 5½ Vasantha Ruba Varman IND 1996 9
9 11 Aditya Chakraborty IND 1967 5½ 1 – 0 5½ Satkar Chirag IND 1797 34
10 15 Manush Shah IND 1905 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Naren swaminathan P IND 1790 39
11 50 Rishi Sardana IND 1753 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Kumaran B IND 1901 17
12 18 Barath L IND 1892 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Akhilesh T Rai IND 1787 40
13 23 Tamhankar Viraj IND 1860 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Krishna Teja N IND 1777 42
14 55 Rakesh Kumar Jena IND 1735 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Vignesh Nr IND 1848 24
15 25 S Bhat Vaibhav IND 1845 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Kaushik Bhave IND 1769 46

Pairings/Results Girls
Round 9 on 2010/07/02 at 1500 hrs
Bo. No. Name FED Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Name FED Rtg No.
1 5 WFM Monnisha Gk IND 1808 7 1 – 0 6½ Shvetha V IND 1583 32
2 9 Bakshi Rutuja IND 1729 6½ 1 – 0 6½ Sunyasakta Satpathy IND 1846 1
3 2 Lasya G IND 1839 6 1 – 0 6 Dharani Sree R IND 1672 16
4 6 WFM Srija Seshadri IND 1802 6 0 – 1 6 Varshini V IND 1525 44
5 31 Deodhar vrushali Umesh IND 1587 6 0 – 1 5½ Ashwini U IND 1838 3
6 4 WFM Mahalakshmi M IND 1836 5½ 1 – 0 5½ Varsha c K IND 1640 22
7 8 Shoumi Mukerjee IND 1766 5½ ½ – ½ 5½ Salini R IND 1617 24
8 14 Andria L D`souza IND 1691 5½ 1 – 0 5½ WCM Tarini Goyal IND 1581 33
9 52 Mahika Mor IND 1489 5½ 0 – 1 5½ Parnali S Dharia IND 1658 19
10 7 Meenu Priya Se IND 1774 5 ½ – ½ 5 Aarthi G IND 1602 28
11 10 Meghna C H IND 1717 5 ½ – ½ 5 Manjula R IND 1563 39
12 50 Pritika D IND 1492 5 ½ – ½ 5 Akankhya Kabi IND 1713 11
13 13 Sradhanjali Jena IND 1712 5 1 – 0 5 Kelkar Devika IND 1579 35
14 34 Shiny Das IND 1580 5 0 – 1 5 Gangamma b N IND 1669 17
15 18 Soneji Janhavi IND 1660 5 1 – 0 5 Deekshidha P S IND 0 76

Source: www.chess-results.com

Today it was a very interesting day for us at the Chess Gurukul class. While the class was going on, many of the kids complained that they have some form or other of fear while playing the game and this is preventing them from actually playing and enjoying the game. It ranged from fear of losing the game,fear of the opponent,fear of the position on the board,fear of reaction of parents incase of unfavourable result,fear of peer comments etc. It sounded like I had travelled to my past and listening to myself! I had all these fears and more too

It is in these kind of situations I feel the responsibility of being a coach for young kids become quite challenging and interesting too. My heart went out to these kids and I was struck with an inspiring idea and decided to try it out and see if it works.

I gave a small lecture which went something like this… it is quite natural to have such doubts and fears and nothing wrong about that. I explained even the World Champions ( forgive me Anand, I had to!) and the Grand Masters (at least I did !) have many of these thoughts and doubts but the secret is in how to handle these emotions properly and keep them under some sort of balance instead of letting them loose. The main thing is not to react negatively to such disturbing thoughts. We should just tell our mind patiently and sincerely to focus on what we should be doing instead of worrying about what might happen in future. This sounds easy but does it work in practice?

We did a small experiment. I suggested to the kids that we will all close our eyes and sincerely tell our minds to remind us when the time is 7:30pm. When we did this it was 6:55pm. The kids got excited and closed their eyes and did the same along with me. Then we continued our analysis of an interesting game by Smirin from white side of Petroff defence played recently.

Then after sometime I looked at the kids and we all looked at the clock and it was 7:26pm! I immediately told them not to worry and try again. They all got excited again and we decided to set our target at 7:35pm. Again we continued with our analysis and this time we made sure the clock was hidden out of sight. And after few minutes many children said ” Sir look at the time now!” 

AND IT WAS  7:35pm !!!

We were all so happy. I think I made my point that we could have what we want if we want it with all our heart and passion and sincerity. We can control our thoughts with simple instructions and slowly we can learn to overcome our fears.

I have requested the kids to try this experiment on various daily activities and let me know about the result. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

A four day camp for the students of Chess Gurukul concluded successfully at Chennai on 15th April. The trainer was GM R.B. Ramesh (its me!). There were 15 participants in the rating range of 1550 upto 1975 aged between 9 -14 years. The students were given training in Calculation of variations for the full four days and the result was truly beyond my expectation. Initially the children struggled a lot to solve even the simple of positions but once they understood that with patience and perseverance the art of calculation could be learnt and improved upon quickly as in any other part of Chess.

When I told the children we will be working on just Calculation for the whole period of the camp the children groaned (as expected!) and complained they will be bored in just 1 day. I was pleasantly surprised when the same kids wanted to do more of Calculation on the second and every subsequent day. They started to throughly enjoy to experience  first hand how their small but powerful brains could handle so much work and produce quality output when properly focused. Many of them solved positions were they had to visualise 13 moves ahead from the initial complicated position!.  Can I ask for more?

I believe the kids enjoyed as much as I did the last 4 days of hard work. It is always nice to see young children pushing their limits to the maximum, over coming the in built doubts and fears and insecurities and realising the fruits of sustained, focussed work. They suddenly realised that they could calculate much much better than they thought was possible. Which was exactly what I wanted them to learn from the short camp.

We are planning to have a week long camp on Calculation when the kids return from various tournaments. Am looking forward to it!

I am really fortunate to get such hard working and highly motivated kids in Chess Gurukul. WE will be a force to reckon with in a couple of years in India! Watch out!

A four day camp for the students of Chess Gurukul concluded successfully at Chennai on 15th April, 2010. The trainer was Grandmaster R.B. Ramesh (its me!). There were 15 participants in the rating range of 1550 upto 1975 aged between 9 -14 years. The students were given training in Calculation of variations for the full four days and the result was truly beyond my expectation. Initially the children struggled a lot to solve even the simple of positions but once they understood that with patience and perseverance the art of calculation could be learnt and improved upon quickly as in any other part of Chess.

When I told the children we will be working on just Calculation for the whole period of the camp the children groaned (as expected!) and complained they will be bored in just 1 day. I was pleasantly surprised when the same kids wanted to do more of Calculation on the second and every subsequent day. They started to throughly enjoy to experience  first hand how their small but powerful brains could handle so much work and produce quality output when properly focused. Many of them solved positions were they had to visualise 13 moves ahead from the initial complicated position!.  Can I ask for more?

I believe the kids enjoyed as much as I did the last 4 days of hard work. It is always nice to see young children pushing their limits to the maximum, over coming the in built doubts and fears and insecurities and realising the fruits of sustained, focussed work. They suddenly realised that they could calculate much much better than they thought was possible. Which was exactly what I wanted them to learn from the short camp.

We are planning to have a week long camp on Calculation when the kids return from various tournaments. Am looking forward to it!

It is high time that I write a blog about piracy as I have had countless discussions with my friends and family regarding this topic and it is definitely worth sharing with the world. The word ‘piracy’ really does not mean much to most people around unless they are directly involved in selling any product that can be pirated!

To begin with I have to say that being a chess grand master I am quite ashamed that most of the chess programs that I used up until last year were pirated. I downloaded them from wherever possible and it seemed pretty harmless to me personally. Comparing my action here to match fixing in any other sport would be rather exaggerating, but however it is an act that thoroughly has been disrespectful to the sport that I have loved and cherished all my life. The sport that has given me everything, including education, a roof and my food deserves a little more I guess. In normal comparison it equates to someone who can afford to buy books, but decided to steal it from a different place say X, irrelevant of the fact if the place X has that book in abundance or not, it is just that act that feels so wrong.

Really? How can something be bad if the whole world does it? When every single song that comes out and every single movie that is released is available in the internet, sometimes even before they hit the theaters! It cannot be wrong to just watch them, can it? So many things that we do in today’s world are what I like to call “mechanical”. Yeah, more like a machine than a man. Lot of our actions are based on pre-existing “norms” and sometimes we do not use our logics to determine what is right or wrong and just flow with the crowd. Think of it this way,
If you were born in an Arab country, restricting women from driving could be normal;
If you were born in India arranged marriage would be totally logical;
If you were born in America, leaving the lights on when leaving a room would not even feel like wasting electricity, because it is available in abundance.

All these practices have evolved over a long period of time for various reasons and even though I know a lot of very reasonable people who believe these activities are normal, the above mentioned points do not seem logical to me. Hence I should not be practicing these ideas even if they were taught to me by my parents or my social surrounding. Hold on! I am not saying I am perfect, I am NO SAINT, I make a lot of mistakes, but I would just like to be aware of all the reasons behind my actions. My point here is to stress that we should not always believe what we are taught to believe by our ancestors or by our social environment, but think on our own and see what would make sense?

Piracy is one huge threat to our community today because it is just common practice. No one who downloads a song from the internet feels like robbing a store, but in reality that is what they are doing. When I walk by a Crocodile showroom and I see a T-Shirts prized for over 200 Euros and I also know that I can get a reasonable one from the store around the corner for 30 bucks, I do not seem to walk into the store with a golf club and smash the glass door into pieces and take them away for free? Over the internet someone has already smashed that glass door open, so we are not bothered to just walk in and pick up some free stuff.

If we are the educated, if we are the literate and if we are the people who have the exposure to the world and we indulge in stealing aka piracy what would those poor uneducated people from rural areas teach their kids? Then again they may not be corrupted by the concrete jungles we live in and they might still have some moral values left in them.

Law enforcement cannot stop crime, it can only control it to a certain extent. Crime can be stopped only when those who want to commit crimes change their mind. Every time you are downloading from the internet you are directly affecting someone’s business. Now the person you are stealing from maybe a millionaire already, but you are no Robin Hood! Watching a movie or listening to a new song is still a luxury in this life, it is not a necessity. So if you do not have the money or if you feel wronged by the prize of the product, just boycott it, get it when you feel it is worth it, but do not download it, please buy it. Be courteous on the web and be patient, good things will always come back to you.

Last but not the least, I am not suggesting that everyone live by the rules all the time. Rules are meant to be broken, that is what makes our lives interesting. Ofcourse if your friend calls up and says there is this new hot pic of a British babe on the net, you may have no other choice to put aside your principles and download it!!! but keep that as a rarity rather than as a practice. Just living by rules will make you a Robot, and your life would become too predictable and boring… Break them once in a while to stay sexy!

“Be the change that you want to see in this world”
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

I was happy to be present there in the role of a coach. SP Sethuraman had just won the Gold medal in the Under 16 boys’ category and young Ivana Maria Furtado had won the Silver medal in the Under 10 Girls category. These two train with me often. Indian team as a whole had won 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze in different categories. Though this number is less compared to the medals tally in the 2008 edition at Vietnam, it was still a pretty decent count. I was quite content about this.

Remaining Objective:

When I saw Sethuraman and Ivana getting the prize I couldn’t help getting little emotional myself. Now this opens some important related questions for me. Should the coach become emotionally involved with students performance? If yes then does it not affect the objectivity of the coach – student relationship?

After all a coach should be able to assess the students objectively and teach them things they need to learn without letting emotional issues getting in the way. For example, lets say a student takes some risk and loses a game as a result, then it is easy for the coach to suggest to the student to take less risk in the ensuing games but as a trainer one should teach young children to take calculated risks as it is one of the important qualities of a world class player. Here we see the result of a single game can affect the objectivity of the coach if he is not careful.

Personally I try very hard to not to assess my students based purely on their results in a tournament but also to keep in mind other pertinent things like the general working habit, the level of motivation of the player, commitment to succeed despite occasional setbacks etc…After all it is these qualities that will differentiate a champion from normal mortals…But it is not easy to remain unaffected by the students results at all times.

Tip of the iceberg:

I have worked with many chess players in different age categories and different levels of achievement and I have learnt a lot as a result of these interactions. Still I feel I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. Teaching young children something (anything) is quite a complex task. My main priorities while trying to teach chess to someone is to first get them interested in the game and then to teach them to learn the champion qualities along with Chess related things.

Champion qualities :

A student should have/ develop/ learn/cultivate the following qualities to become a strong player in the long run in my opinion.

Love for the game, commitment to succeed at all costs, an understanding that there are no short cuts available and that appropriate hard work should be put, ability to handle wins and losses more calmly, take logical decisions efficiently with less effort, emotional balance, being independent and great belief in oneself. Of course there are plenty of other qualities as well but the above should give one a rough idea of the qualities required.

Priorities of a coach and player:

As a player we have different priorities and when we are a trainer the priorities change as it should.  Getting good result is the most important factor that keeps us going for more as a player, but as a trainer we should focus on the qualities and the character of a player more than the results itself. This is not to say that result is not important – it is very much. But overall growth is more important.

Role as a parent:

Going back to the prize distribution ceremony in the World youth Championship, I felt the role as a parent more. I very much wished my daughter Varsha (4 year old) to be on stage and receive the World champion title with the National anthem playing in the back ground. This is something I could not achieve myself as a player and probably this made me think this way.

My wife Aarthie who was also present there felt the same way. We have discussed many times whether it is proper to teach our daughter Chess at this tender age. Every time we feel it is the correct decision. Time will tell whether we are correct or not.

Now going to the next topic:

Teaching Chess to my daughter – part 2 :

Varsha with her trainer Ganesh

We (me and my wife Aarthie) have this great desire – to make a champion out of our daughter in Chess. I understand some may feel uncomfortable with this idea. Is it right to impose on a child our own desires? My reasoning goes something like this…

Chess has taught me many valuable lessons in my life which I would not have learnt otherwise. It has made me a better person (I hope J), given me some of the best and worst moments of my life. I want to provide the same opportunity to my daughter too and to teach her the things which I have learnt from my own experience. I feel chess is a good medium to learn about life the proper way.

Today I told my daughter stories about Mahatma Gandhi. I hope she learnt some useful things from this. Gandhi has been my role model since I was young. I am deeply impressed at his courage, honesty, truthfulness and tremendous self belief despite all odds. I have tried to model myself on his way of life but I know I am trying to achieve the impossible. I am not half as good as him. But still it is worth trying to be like someone so good.

For some time now, Varsha is learning chess from her first coach Ganesh (refer part 1 on this topic). I asked Varsha today what she has learnt so far. She said she has learnt about the concept of pin, supporting pieces, movement of pieces, etc…

Varsha is learning the chess basics now but I can see clearly she is not able to focus on the game for more than few minutes. I hope this is a common phenomenon. Though I am a little worried about this sometimes, I am sure things will improve as time passes.

Currently Varsha is having 3 classes a week with each class for 45 minutes duration. She spends this time mainly talking to Ganesh about her school or some other things. Though I don’t want to push her too much I am thinking a lot about how to improve her span of concentration. Probably I should start teaching her few things myself or let her just play more and get her interested. Maybe she likes to play more than to listen.

She already says she wants to be a Grand Master and World Champion not really knowing what it means to get there. I hope to teach her that.

In the beginning I want my daughter to learn about technical things from Ganesh and I would focus just on teaching her good, champion qualities. I want her to be a tough person who can handle things on her own and be a good person above all else. This is my dream.