From an interior village in Vellore district, a 16-year-old girl has been making steady strides in the game of chess. Winning laurels in several championships, this class XII student has to her credit two national gold and two silver medals.
A resident of Seruvangi village in Gudiyatham, S. Senthamizh Yazhini loves the chequered board, and aims to become a Grandmaster one day. Introduced to the black-and-white board when she was in class IV, there was no looking back since then.
After playing in several district and State level games, Yazhini won her first national-level medal at the 2014 national school games organised by the School Games Federation of India. While it was silver back then, the following year brought the best out of her as she bagged the gold in the under-17 category. She won the third national medal (silver) in last year’s championship.
National championship
Being part of the Tamil Nadu team, sheonce again bagged the gold medal (under-19) in the 63rd SGF National Chess Championship 2017 organised from November 10 to 14 at Warangal in Telangana. She had won contestants from six States including Haryana, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to lift the gold.
It was on seeing her ability to remember a 10-minute-long dialogue from the movie “Veerapandiya Kattabomman” that her father, S. Saravanan, a senior national arbiter, turned her focus to chess.
“I understood that she had good memory power. So, my wife and I started to coach her in playing chess,” he said.
After studying in a government school till class X, Yazhini moved to a government-aided school in class XI. She has international rating in all three types of the game – classical, rapid and blitz.
“I think concentration is key to play a good game of chess. Memory power and interest are also important,” she said. As she aims to continue to play chess, Yazhini is bracing for bigger battle of minds, and looks ahead to taking part and winning international tournaments. “I want to become a Grandmaster,” she said.
