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Making the moves

Photo: Bhagya Prakash k.

Young masters The Children’s Monthly tournament, held by the C.V. Raman Chess Club, helps players get adequate exposure

Chess, is not all about 64 squares. At least not in Karnataka and Bangalore in particular. Lack of quality coaches and inadequate financial supporthas hampered the growth of chess to a large extent.

Karnataka, not long ago, was among the pockets that saw a chess boom in the country.

This trend however has dipped drastically. International Masters D.V. Prasad and Sudhakar Babu, set the trend early on.

And today only M.S. Thej Kumar remains the lone GM from the state, a rating that he achieved in April this year at the Mumbai Mayors Cup championship.

Over the last six or seven years, the State associations have had a mired existence. Three senior players — N. Sanjay, Arvind Sastri and Shivananda — were banned during a championship for alleged drug abuse and the players revolted and even formed a Players Association.

The Karnataka Chess Association sought cover and the government provided an arbitrator/Tehsildar to run the affairs of the Association until youngster Rajshekar took over the mantle.

But then the youthful exuberance did not last long as the expected grants did not come even after conducting two major tournaments — Women’s A and Garden City FIDE rating tournaments. Rajshekar called it quits soon after.

In 2006 R. Hanumantha took over as secretary under the presidentship of Achuthananda Reddy of the United Karnataka Chess Association (UKCA). They have managed to set things right. The term of the present committee ends this September.

For any Association or sport to survive financial aid is of utmost importance. Depending on government aid for every foreign trip does not yield fruit always. D.V. Sundar, is at the helm of affairs of the All India Chess federation (AICF). “The flaws have been ironed out and quite a lot issues streamlined,” said Hanumantha.

“I am still active as a player and represent my employers (LIC). I have travelled as manager and even recently played a tournament for below 2000 ranked players at Bangkok and finished second best. But there is no satisfaction in administrative work.”

“Yahoo! came up with sponsorship for the whole of last year and we managed to conduct under-nine nationals and two State-level FIDE rated tournaments, thanks to that. But it’s not the same this year.” Mangalore is very active. So is Shimoga and to a lesser extent Mysore, with Bangalore, Dharwad, Belgaum and Hassan. Mangalore in fact has taken up the onus of conducting two national-level championships this year — the National A and the Under-15 nationals.

“M. S. Gururaj is a livewire and as president of South Kanara district and the vice president of UKCA, he is doing wonderfully well in that area. And understandably a lot of talent is emerging from those centres,” admitted M.S. Meena, the joint secretary of the UKCA.

Quite a few chess academies have mushroomed too. The Children’s Monthly tournament, held on the first Sunday of every month by the C.V. Raman Chess Club, which will be conducting its 25th event next month, is one such wherein the players get adequate exposure.

“Earlier, Rapid Chess tournaments were conducted and winners in various age groups were segregated from that event. Today, however, we have age category events almost in every tournament,” said Hanumantha.

Bangalore’s M. Satwik, Nihal Manjunath and Vionni D’Cunha and Manasa K. (from Mangalore), Stanny G.A, Shruthi and Shrishti Shetty (from Shimoga) are some of the exciting prospects from the State while the likes of Girish Kaushik (Mysore) have already gone on to win world titles.

“Besides money, manpower too is a problem,” admitted Meena who also aims to rope in a few GMs and high-profile coaches to come down and conduct camps at a regular basis.

“The likes of Pravin Thipsay demands Rs. 50,000 as appearance money and not many associations are in a position to give that.”

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