Love for the game prompted him to establish an exclusive academy
— PHOTO: N. BASHKARAN
Hosur: Coming from a humble background, he has produced many whiz kids in chess. Many of his wards have won laurels at the State and National level tournaments.
His love for the game prompted him to establish an exclusive academy for those hailing from poor background. “Chess is not an elite man’s game. I have taken it to the poorest of the poor, says Jayapal Chandady, founder of Hosur Chess Academy.
Founded by Mr. Chandady in January 2000, the academy has been instrumental in encouraging children to play chess in Hosur.
He told S. Prasad that when he expressed his desire to play chess at the age of 10, he was told that it was a rich man’s game.
But I wanted to make the game possible for the poor and interested children.
“My goal is to make chess reach the poorest among the poor. Though we are a country with a population of more than 100 crore we have only 14 Grandmasters in the game. If we had a liberal concept about the game we could have produced 100 Grandmasters in five years,” he says.
N. Veena of the Academy has recently won the Karnataka State under-19 championship. The Academy has developed eight FIDE-rated players from Hosur alone when compared with three FIDE-rated players from Bangalore.
Children are trained from an early age so that they get an insight into the game. The Academy has conducted about 200 tournaments in Hosur so far. The tournaments are conducted in different age categories of under 8, 10, 12, 14 and16.
Besides this, there are separate tournaments for top-seeded players such as Top 10, Elegant 8 and Super 6.
Children who succeed consecutively will be promoted to these categories, says Mr. Chandady.
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