World Youth Chess Championship 2009 – GM Ramesh’s perspective

World youth Chess Championship at Antalya,Turkey from 12th to 23^rd November 2009

Well now it is time to talk about the World youth Championship at Antalya, Turkey.  This is a big event for all the aspiring Indian chess players who want to make a name for them in the World scene. In the last year edition at Vietnam, India bagged 4 World titles in Padmini Rout, Adhiban Baskaran, Sayantan Das and Vidit Santosh Gujarathi. This year all of them are playing in higher category with more new faces joining them.

Lack of Chinese opposition in age category events gives Indian kids better chance at the title. It is a curious phenomenon with the Chinese generally showing lack of interest in winning age category titles despite a pool of talent at disposal.

Last year at Vietnam I had come as personal coach for IM Srinath and this year I am part of the 4 member (me, my wife WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy, IM Murugan and IM DV Prasad) coach team to help our kids in their preparation for the games.

The Indian team arrived in 2 batches one from Mumbai and one from Delhi. The travel took almost a day which included 3 flights (Chennai-Delhi, Delhi – Istanbul and Istanbul-Antalya) and a bus journey from Antalya airport to the venue which took 2 hours. Add to this an hour’s wait at the Hotel before we were allotted our rooms and you get the picture.

To add excitement to our journey one of the parent had lost her and her child’s boarding pass (Istanbul- Antalya sector) and had taken as a self compliment the Knife from the cutlery provided in the flight which gave us a hard time in the security check! And yours sincerely had an upset stomach and vomiting to add to the fun. Priyadarshan contributed his part to this by adding two bagful of vomit in the flight. Whack!

The main complaints being the lack of seating arrangements for the parents/coaches/guardians who have to wait standing outside the playing hall with practically no shelter. With rain promising to come any moment, things don’t look too good for us. The securities have been instructed to not allow anyone except players inside the playing arena and that left many coaches, delegates fuming. Later in the day those with visitors pass were allowed inside the playing hall. To add to this there is no toilet facility for the parents who have to wait in the cold for hours  together!

This is the entrance to the tournament hall. Imagine 2000 people need to go inside through this in “zero tolerance era”

The playing hall is so cramped it is practically impossible to move around even for the players. The hotel rooms don’t have Wi-Fi and the players have to go to the lobby for internet and that too for payment. I guess it should be lucrative to organise such events if one is not too bothered about providing basic comforts. The food and the rooms are pretty decent.

The cramped tournament hall view

Ashwini and Pon N Krithika browsing on the net at the Hotel Lobby

Antalya is a beautiful coastal city with mountains on the other side just like in Halong Bay, Vietnam where I was just a few days back as coach for the Indian team for the Asian Indoor games.

Mountain view

The walk from the hotel to the venue and back is exciting with plenty of shopping prospects along the roadside shops. November being off season there are practically no tourists to this place at this time of the year. So we are a welcome presence and the shop keepers offer good discounts on all products.

Good place for shopping

Me and Murugan went for a short walk during the 1^st round and learnt that Turkish people have their own superstition in the evil eye concept similar to the drishti concept in India. And that Jewellery shops here sell products made at Jaipur, India!

In the first round Shreyans Daklia scored a fine win over a Grand Master while National Under 17 Champion Saranya lost to an unrated player due to a terrible oversight allowing mate in one in the girls section. Otherwise the results were as expected with the top seeded Indians having their way in most of the games.

National age category champion Saranya who had a bad start with a first round loss

Day two:

We went for a short walk early in the morning in the beach which was exhilarating. I will be attending a FIDE trainer’s course from today and hope to learn about training young children.

Among the Indian kids the one who has grabbed the attention of all is Arpita Mukherjee from Kolkatta. She is 8 years old and has come alone for the trip without her parents! Being cheerful at all times she is everywhere at the same time. Her English (if you can call it that J ) is very cute and she has the habit of waking up everyone in our floor early in the morning and ask for Ramesh sir room! She finds it hard to remember the room numbers as they are 4 digits.

Normal Arpitha

AB(OVE) normal Arpitha J

Myself and Murugan attended the FIDE trainer course which began today. It was interesting but we hope the best is yet to come.  While the tournament has just started (2 rounds complete) some girls are having a tough time with results already and feeling the pressure. Last year National Under 15 champion Bharathi is having the worst start with 2 losses. Another talented young girl from Chennai Ashwini too has managed to score only half a point from 2 games. We went for a walk by the beach and discussed these issues and tried to motivate them to come out of this bad form and get more focus into the game. They looked cheerful after this talk and I hope something positive comes out of this.

In the FIDE trainer meet, some coaches from Turkey came to me and said Indian players have good positional base unlike the European children. I was surprised myself at the observation as I was having a different opinion. I feel Indian kids are good in tactics and need to work more on improving positional sense.

The FIDE trainer course is taking up most of the time. We are learning new things about chess training and I am eager to implement them at Chess Gurukul academy on my return to Chennai.

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