| One big complaint of our women chess players has always been about the lack of Grandmaster tournaments in the country exclusively for them.
"There isn't even a single Woman Grandmaster (WGM) tournament in India, you know,''
lamented a top women chess player pointing out the current situation with understandable concern. But
the recent AICF press release should make them happy, in that India would be hosting two Woman Grandmaster (WGM) tournaments this year, besides the Asian
Women's Championship, which is also a WGM event. The All India Chess Federation secretary P.T. Ummer Koya
briefed the press on Tuesday, 11-04-2000, that the WGM tournaments would be conducted in New Delhi from September 3 to 14 and at Salem in
November, followed by the Asian Women's Championship at Nagpur in December.
This is of course great news for India's women chess players, who have been doing fairly well against heavy odds of
late and they definitely deserve tournaments like these. Two years ago, they recorded the best performance by an Indian women's team at the Olympiad in Elista. Koneru Humpy, the
13 year old Andhra prodigy, has already won two World titles and last year, Aarthie Ramaswamy, won the World
Under-18 championship, the biggest achievement by an Indian since Viswanathan Anand won the World junior title in 1987.
And quite recently 9 year old V K Sindhu won the Asian Under 10 title
at Iran. The Indian girls have done reasonably well in the World junior championships in the last couple of years too. More importantly, the promise these girls show is unmistakable. Renowned Russian coach Alexander Lyssenko, after a training camp last year, had remarked that he expected India to be a strong nation in the World women's chess in a few years' time.
Chennai based IWM S Vijayalakshmi, the strongest woman player India has ever
seen, has been missing Woman Grandmaster title closely for quite some
time now. She would be looking forward to complete her title at home some time later in the year. "It is in fact for the sake of players like Vijayalakshmi that the AICF has decided to conduct these WGM tournaments,'' said Ummer Koya.
"Our men players are getting opportunities to play in many GM tournaments in India. So we thought the women should also have some closed tournaments,'' he added.
Bhagyashree Thipsay is another player with two WGM norms
, Saheli Barua and Aarthie Ramaswamy have got one WGM norm each. Apart from them, potential WGMs like Humpy would be fielded in the events,. The top four from the National
Women's "A", which will be held at Mumbai from June 7 to 22,
are also eligible to play.
The AICF was trying to bring some highly rated WGMs for the tournaments at Salem and New
Delhi and the probable invitees list includes Former World Champion
Maya Chiburdanidze from Georgia, the World No. 9 GM Pia Cramling of Sweden, the World No. 20 Almira Skripchenko-Lautier
of Maldova and World No. 28 Monika Bobrowska of Poland.
Indian men too have plenty to look forward,
with at least three more GM tournaments to be held in India
later this year, two of them at Hyderabad and the other at Chennai. The Hyderabad events would be held from June 15 to 28 and from July 1 to 14. The tourney at Chennai would be conducted from September 1 to
14, 2000 . Talented 13 year old Andhra lad P. Harikrishna would get a chance in the Category
10 tournaments at Hyderabad to go for his GM norms, after becoming India's youngest International Master a few weeks ago. The top four from the National
"A", which will be held at Mumbai from May 17 to June 6, are
also eligible to play in the GM tournaments.
"The Federation is working hard towards its goal for the 2002 Olympiad in Slovenia. We want India to win a medal there, and I don't think it is an impossible goal,'' said Ummer
Koya." It is gladdening to note that the
corporates are finally coming forward to support chess. That would give the game in the country a tremendous boost. But we would like to have, and need, more
sponsorships,'' he added.
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