Nirmal Das had on March 28 launched an online chess tournament out of sheer boredom induced by the lockdown.
The intention of this 39-year-old civil engineer in Tripura’s Public Works Department was to connect with a dozen-odd players of the board game in his hometown and Agartala. In 44 days, the fee-free tournament played across four formats has 975 participants from across the globe and counting.
Some tournament regulars are from countries as far as Brazil, Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. Many foreign and Indian participants have a Fédération Internationale des Échecs or FIDE rating of more than 2,000, a benchmark for quality players.
“Chess has been my passion, though not of the digital kind. Boredom because of staying indoors during the initial days of lockdown made me log on to lichess.org, a chess portal. The idea of an online tournament on this platform struck me and I decided to give it a try,” Mr. Das told The Hindu on Sunday.
The tournament started with 15 local enthusiasts, including his son who had participated at the Under-7 nationals in 2019. About 70 players from Agartala signed up in less than a week followed by 80 more from Assam and other north-eastern States.
Chess lovers from Delhi, Karnataka and other States saw Mr. Das conducting the tournament for 450 players. “It kept getting bigger as players from Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, Germany, Brazil and other countries have joined,” he said.
At 75 years, Anju Sarkar, a former Tripura chess champion, is a regular at these online tournaments and is the oldest player.
Mr. Das has set a condition for Indian participants: download the corona tracker first. The entry of foreign participants is unconditional.
Mr. Das had initially conducted the tournament twice a day. With many countries easing the lockdown, it is now being conducted once from 8 pm.
The duration for the tournament for the bullet, blitz and rapid chess tournaments is two hours. For classical chess, it is 2 hours 30 minutes. The top seven performers feature on the honours list every day.
“The four types of chess tournaments are held by rotation. For instance, Sakhawat Hussain of Karnataka won the 68th Lockdown Online International Chess tournament of the classical type on Friday followed by Aisha Wadhwani of Haryana while Ronaldo Luis of Brazil took the fifth spot,” Mr. Das said.
On Saturday, Snehaal Roy of Assam, a Class VI student with a FIDE rating of 1,252, had won the rapid tournament followed by Kingshuk Debnath of Tripura. Rafi Islam of Bangladesh took the sixth spot.
On May 8, Mr. Das restarted the daytime tournament for two hours but only for beginners, part-timers and those who had lost touch with the “mind game on a 64-square board”.
“What excites me is that I have been able to provide a platform where any chess player can play against any other, with or without FIDE ranking,” Mr. Das said.
