Sidharth Chanchlani – The Beginner Champion

In the Open Tournament we had 77 participants that competed against each other across 7 rounds. Vivaan Bhatt was the champion at this event with a perfect score of 7 / 7 with Vivaan’s most interesting game being against Sriranga Narapuram.

The game opened with the Philidor Defense with Vivaan losing a pawn on the 19th move. This was followed by Sriranga making a blunder making him an exchange down. The two then exchanged queens and progressed into the end game. Vivaan soon created a passed pawn and Sriranga resigned on the 42nd move.

In the second place we had Adhvik Manoj with a score of 6 / 7 followed by Sanjey Ramachandran with a score of 5.5 / 7. 

On Sunday we had our Beginner Level Tournament where Sidharth Chanchlani stole the show as our champion with an excellent score of 4.5 out of the 6 rounds that took place.

In the second place we had Sean Siculiano who also had a score of 4.5 but came second according to the tie breaker. Sidharth and Sean played an impressive game against each other in the last round. The game opened with Sidharth losing his queen on the 4th move leaving him with a massive disadvantage. However, soon after this blunder, Sean too blundered his queen. As the game progressed into the middle game, Sidharth blundered his rook as well and soon after Sean did the same. In the end game Sidharth was a knight up. On the 58th move, Sidharth checkmated Sean with his knight, pawn and king.

Our second runner up was Nithic Sampathkumar, with a score of 4.5 out of 6 as well. 

In our Intermediate Tournament we had 49 students competing against each other with our Champion Adhvik Manoj winning this event with an incredible score of 6.5 / 7.

Our third seed for this event was Kinjal Chatterjee who had a score of 5 / 7 and played an engaging game against Adhvik in their 5th round. Adhvik played the English Opening and the game was equal till the two players exchanged their queens and moved to the end game. In the end game, Adhvik made a passed pawn, and to stop this passed pawn from advanced, Kinjal had to sacrifice his knight, giving Adhvik a good advantage in the end game. Adhvik used this advantage and eventually created a queen and checkmated Kinjal on the 68th move.

In second place we had Parth Mishra, with a great score of 5 / 7 as well. 

The final tournament of the Sunday tournaments was the Advanced Tournament where Advit Gupta prevailed as the champion with a perfect score of 6 / 6.

Advit and our runner up, Sanjey Ramachandran played an intense game. Sanjey played the Italian Game Opening and the game continued extremely smoothly till the middle game. Advit had control of the ‘d’ file and his rook was strategically placed on the file as well. On the 24th move, Sanjey missed a royal fork that forced him to resign immediately. Sanjey completed the remaining tournament and has a score of 4.5 / 5. In third place we had Saket Reddy with a score of 4 / 5. 

In our second round of weekly tournaments we had Yajat Biyani as the winner of the Beginner Battle Tournament with an amazing win rate of 91%.

Sean Siculiano our runner up, who had a wonderful win rate of 59% played an interesting game against Yajat. Sean made a queen blunder in the opening, giving Yajat a massive advantage. Yajat used this advantage to create an attacking position, because of which he captured some of Sean’s minor pieces as well, which made Yajat’s position very strong. On the 22nd move, Sean missed a mate in one, making Yajat the winner of this game.

In the third position we had Aariv Upadhyay with a win rate of 46%.

In the Intermediate Tournament we had a spectacular participation of 48 students with Adhvik Manoj as the champion with an excellent win rate of 92%.

Adhvik played some great games but his most exceptional game was against Vivaan Bhatt. Vivaan stood second at this event with a fabulous win rate of 77%. Vivaan played the King’s pawn game and Adhvik became a pawn up in the opening. In the middle game Adhvik further gained one more pawn and the two traded queens on the 30th move and entered the end game with their rooks. They then exchanged their rooks as well and the end game was between Vivaan’s king and two pawns and Adhvik’s king and three pawns. The pawns were exchanged and on the 56th move only two kings were left on the board making the game a draw by insufficiency of material.

In third place we had Rishab Ghosh with a brilliant win rate of 83%. 

In the final event for the week we had Sriranga Narapuram at the top of the winner list with a record breaking win rate of 100%.

Sriranga played a brilliant game with our runner up, Saket Reddy, who had an incredible win rate of 80%. Saket opened with the Italian Game- Classical Variation and the game was relatively equal, besides Sriranga having a rather exposed king. The two exchanged their queens and minor pieces and entered the end game with a king and 6 pawns each, with both players having double pawns. Sriranga managed to make a passed pawn before Saket in the end game and won the game on the 57th move with a queen and his king.

In third place we had Vishnu Kannan with a win rate of 50%. 

This week saw some outstanding performances and mind-blowing games and we hope to see the same in the following week as well.