Senior National Chess C’ship
Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 11: After five rounds of Senior National Chess Championship, being played at Gurjar Desh Charitable Trust, Channi Himmat here, young Grand Masters Arvind Chidambram of Tamil Nadu emerged as sole leader, while Grand Master Anurag Mhamal of Goa and International Master Stany GA of Karnataka are following the leader at 4.5 points each.
Still 8 more rounds are to be played in this event.
Around 160 players from 27 States and 8 special units are participating including 19 Grand Masters and 20 International Masters and some Arjuna Awardee players. Many big players are finding going very tough even in initial rounds in the high quality event. This is also a Asian Zonal 3.7 event as India is a separate Zone in Asia.
Total prizes of Rs 20 lakhs will be distributed among top 10 players and first prize being Rs 5 lakh. Total 13 rounds will be played. Selected players will lead the Asian Zone 3.7 in world events. It is the strongest ever National Chess Championship held in India with the participation of 50 Titled players.
Soham Kamotra, Sumit Grover, Khalid Amin, Ajit Singh, Ankush Bhardwaj, SP Sharma, Ashutosh Jamwal and Surinder are players from J&K in this event.
Among J&K players, State Champion Soham Kamotra is at 2 points and Sumit Grover is at 1.5 points out of 3 while others are having tough times in initial rounds in this strongest event of India ever.
The event is played under Fide laws of chess under Swiss System. International Arbiter Dharmendra Kumar is the Chief Arbiter of this event who is supported by seven Deputy Arbiters. This type of events can motivate scores of youth to take up sports in J&K said Atul Kumar Gupta president of AJKCA.
The matches are conducted under overall supervision of AJKCA President Atul Kumar Gupta. All J&K Chess Association members present in today’s matches include AR Wani, Ashiq Ahmad Kolu, Baldev Raj, Taranvir Singh, Kuljeet Jamwal, Farooq Ahmad, Mohammad Shafi, Khalid Amin, Raj Kumar, Vikas Nanda, Rakesh Gupta and Mohit Bharti.