The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : When top chess players came together

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Sunday, Jan 04, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

When top chess players came together

V. V. Subrahmanyam

HYDERABAD: Even as many in her age group are still celebrating the New Year, World No.2 Koneru Humpy has confined herself to the familiar domain – the 64 squares. Apparently, the New Year brings new challenges and forcing her to set new targets to keep herself fully motivated to realise her ultimate dream to be a world champion.

India’s best woman chess player started 2009 with typical seriousness, engrossed to the chess board in the company of the Super GM Krishnan Sasikiran, GMs Sandipan Chanda, Neelotpal Das in the city with the commencement of the ONGC interactive coaching camp, which got a further boost with the visit of A. K. Balyan, Director, HR, ONGC.

The camp presented a rare sight of someone like Vidit S. Gujarathi, the newly-crowned World under-14 champion, and former Asian sub-junior champion V.A.V. Rajesh sharing their thoughts with some of the past masters of the sport, all with the intention of inventing some ‘novelties’ in their preparations for the bigger battles ahead. “This is a very good first-time experience for me to train with some big names like Sasikiran and Humpy. This should definitely help me in achieving my target of becoming a Grandmaster by this year-end,” remarks the young and composed Vidit. By all means, these masters of chess are making the best use of the opportunity of coming together under one roof, thanks to IM Lanka Ravi, who is the brain behind this initiative. “It is always a better option to keep training and playing some games against someone like Sasikiran as you tend to come across innovative ideas which should be helpful in the long run,” says Koneru Humpy.

For his part, Dr. Balyan hinted at the possibility of including non-petroleum sector top players like young GM Parimarajan Negi, WGM Tania Sachdev in these interactive camps. He was also positive to the suggestion of Lanka Ravi about exhibition matches between ONGC team and the national teams of Portugal, Philippines, etc.

Memento

An autographed chess board signed by all the members of the interactive camp is a memento which the key official of ONGC should proudly cherish even as he left the venue reminding the select audience of the efforts to promote other disciplines like boxing, weightlifting too in future. Definitely, good signs for the less glamorous sport!

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