 It all started when I was discussing the
plans for the chess site with our site's technical consultant Visweswaran - I casually mentioned to him that
I had played a couple of tournaments in the late 1970s and that I had even been a member
of the Tal Chess Club during that period. On hearing this, Visvesh made sure that I
entered the next available tournament. Happened to be one for a good cause too! All the
money generated in the tourney is being donated to the fund for Kargil heroes. Kudos to Mr.
Murali Mohan of Capa Chess Academy, who organized this tournament in
fairly short time. The humble person that he is, he repeatedly asserted during the
tournament that the idea had been given by his friend Mr. G. Srikanth and that he was just
converting it into action. Well, I wish I had similar success with my ideas.Anyway on the appointed day, namely, Saturday 7th August '99,
(after Viswesh rang me up twice to ensure that I
did not chicken out, and made doubly sure by giving an entry directly to Mr. Murali Mohan)
I arrived at the Red Cross Society's hall (thanks are due to them too. They have
graciously permitted the usage of the hall without any fee). By way of training I had
played the GNU Chess program and demonstrated the different ways of losing. As a below
average player, who is kidding himself that he is merely out of touch with OTB chess, I
decided to practice with my son who is in Std.12. As a morale booster, it was a wash out -
I overlooked a fork and proceeded to lose.
Coming to the tournament, I see about fifty odd people in
the hall. First shock - there  are so many young boys
and girls, some not even in school it looks like. And many of the older people give every
sign of being there for someone else's cause, what with water bottles and lunch bags.
Well, I see some known people too - that is players whose names I had seen in the papers.
The luck of the draw decides that I will get into a much closer acquaintance with one such
name - my Round One opponent is International Master R B Ramesh. I introduce myself
as a bridge player and as such a friend of his father. Ramesh acknowledges it and after
exchanging pleasantries, he opens with the Queen Pawn. I dredge up some moves from the
Modern Benoni, forget to play the preliminary ... Na6. He scotches all my Queen side
activity, then dominates the center and gobbles up a few pieces on the King side. Very
clinical! I give a nervous smile, attempt some perfunctory analysis of the errors and move
off.
Out of the mouth of babes
Okay - Round II. It is off to the pairing sheet. On the
way Viswesh cheerfully walks in and introduces me to other
big names. Now that I have put a safe distance between them and me, thanks to the Swiss
format, I grandly talk about the Chennai Online Chess site. I note that the pairing sheet
mentions a Shravan Kumar as my opponent. I wonder which of the big names had this chappie
as a light appetizer and saunter over to the board. EEEEEKS! There is a toddler sitting
there. It looks mighty unfair - I feel embarrassed and wonder if it is all right to beat
such infants and then a horrible thought occurs to me. What if this cherubic-faced kid
ends up winning? Looking into his guileless eyes, I shudder inwardly. He lisps, "I am
in second standard" and prattles on while I nod and make some noises - my brain has
been effectively disconnected (that is quite normal, according to my friends but that is a
different story).
Thankfully the 'enfant terrible' is more enfant and less
terrible and he loses a knight pretty early around move 10-15. I relax but then I find he
is not going to resign; he is just playing on and I am mismanaging my clock - that is, I
forget its existence every other move and am running short of time. I wonder if there will
be adjudication. Or if I will lose on time in a winning position. Anyway I open up the
position and the extra piece enables me to win. Now, am I supposed to get him to sign? I
feel quite queasy and luckily the person next to me is doing something similar. So I
nonchalantly copy him and walk off to the podium where Murali & Co are directing
things and grandly announce "Table 15 : 1 - 0". And they note it down. I feel
like putting in a special request about my next round opponent. "Will you please give
me someone older?" but luckily snap out of it and refrain from making such ridiculous
demands. Of course, Mr. Murali Mohan would have thrown the request (and possibly me too
along with it) out through the window.
Out of the mouth of babes - II
After a quick trip to hotel Atlantic for food, I come
back to find my  Round Three opponent - Shwetha, a class VIII student. I am no longer
mortified and I even make some intelligent conversation about my doctor friend who has a
clinic near her school. I am Black and I am defending a Guico Piano and I win a pawn
early. Young Shwetha has the last laugh - after ripping up the Queen side where I had
castled, she sacrifices a knight. With a slightly shell-shocked demeanor I proceed to
watch her administer a mate. She smiles sweetly and tells me "Uncle, you made a
mistake here ... ". I nod brightly and then she offers to play some more games. We
play two and I am gratified to find that I can win and more importantly I find a six move
combination which begins with a Bishop sacrifice.
So in a more subdued but more confident mode, I reach
Round IV to at last meet someone who is in my age group. I relax as I play the Ruy and
around move 10 my opponent plays ... h6 and after careful thinking I work out that I can
win a pawn by a pseudo-sac of the c Bishop. So I grandly play Bxh6 and immediately
discover that the sac was a mirage. My opponent, bless him, is quite confused, and eats up
quite some time on the clock as he wonders whether it is something deep or merely stupid.
Finally he plays Rxh6, (if he had taken the Bishop with the b pawn, I get back his Knight
at c6, whose only support was the b pawn. But as I discovered Rooks can move too) and I
fervently play some vigorous moves keeping up some sort of attack. The clock and the
confusion overwhelm him and he loses.
After the day's four rounds are over, IM Konguvel gives a good lecture on some tactical ideas and I am becoming more and more reconciled to seeing my young friends
rattle off moves while I am groping. He casually talks of a thematic sacrifice of the
Queen for a rook in a variation of Grunfeld's with which he beat a GM. He ties down the
idea to a theme - namely, pushing the a pawn in conjunction with the fianchettoed bishop.
He glibly talks of a twenty move combination by Kasparov. It occurs to me that my problems
have nothing whatsoever to do with finding those combos; but in reaching such sound
positions with possibilities. I keep this depressing thought to myself, lest I sound like
a smart-alec.
I come home to narrate the adventures to my family and
also come up with the title of this article. I practice some more, but drift into looking
at some C code and finally end up playing Freecell.
The morning after
On Sunday, in the fourth round, I meet another older
person, who demonstrates that I better brush up my openings. I defend the Ruy again and he
plays a very early d4 and I reply with a mechanical b4, moving the Spanish Bishop to a
nice and cozy b3 from where it becomes the root of many combinations and I lose quite
economically in under 20 moves.
The next round is with another player who I happily
discover is in the same rusty boat like me; he initiates the Marshall attack and I end up
with a Bishop and a Knight and a Pawn in return for a rook. The following position arose
in that game: |
| In this position a mate seems
to be lurking. But with only 7 minutes left, I chickened out and played to safely end up a
Bishop and two pawns to the good. 20. Nxh7+ f6 21.
Nxf8 Qxf8 22. Bd6 Qc8
23. f4 [While this also wins, 23. Re1 is more direct]
... Qd7 24. Bc5 Qf5 25. Re1 Black resigns
The mistake I made was looking for sacrifices; a less
violent 20th move is the key. With this hint, I am sure you can spot the mating sequence.
The last round was a tragedy again; but this time I
outplayed my opponent's Ruy. He omitted the prophylactic h3 and I managed to double his f
pawns. Instead of developing his pieces, he attacked and I went an exchange up but
blundered a rook away. My opponent graciously admitted that he was losing but then results
are based on what happens and not what might have happened.
Where are the games?
I was always playing around the stratospheric heights of
Tables 14 and 15. And at the time of writing (immediately after the tourney) I havenot got
any games from any of the players. And frankly I do not think anybody knew that I was
looking for them. So here it is. Will the gentlemen and ladies, who were generally
occupying the top tables, please submit interesting games and positions for Chennai's
first Chess site? And of course, good chess is not necessarily to be found only in Tables
1-5. The others are quite welcome to send in their contributions too!
Results
The first prize went to International Master
P Konguvel who, at the end of 7 rounds, was unbeaten on 6½ points.
The next spot was quite crowded with T S Ravi, G
B Prakash, R B Ramesh and P Mahesh Chandran,
all having scored 5½ . The tie-break saw them finishing in that order.The next slot, at 5
points, had R S Prasanna, Aarthie Ramswamy and Sai Meera Ravi.
Behind them, at 4½ points, were K Gopalakrishnan,
T V Karthikeyan, Shyam S Krishnan and B
Sakthi Prabhakar.
Finally
It was a great weekend. I enjoyed myself quite thoroughly
and found the idea of resuming playing Chess quite attractive. I worked out that had I won
the last round, I would have finished 13-20.
Zillions of games are on databases. But unfortunately,
for me, the ladies manning the counter do not know anything about Windows NT. All the CDs
talk about DOS, (is it still alive?) and Windows only. I keep any questions on Linux
Operating System to myself and decide to later ask Visvesh about it.
The efficient and tireless crew of the Capa Chess Academy
and the inimitable Mr. Murali Mohan deserve a special word of thanks. And as the chief
guest of the evening Dr. Srinivasa Kannan mentioned, in his refreshingly short address,
the fact that chess players, who are generally fending for themselves and are not as
blessed with sponsors, managed to collect Rs.15,100, is a great gesture indeed. I
personally salute the spirit of the participants! |
