Aarush Vasanthakumar – Champion of the Week
CHESS KLUB allows students to explore their games practically through our weekly tournaments. Let’s take a look at some of the exceptional games that took place this week and the brilliant winner list.
On the 11th of September, we had the CHESS KLUB Swiss Open Tournament that was held, and we had Aarush Vasanthakumar as the champion with a record-breaking score of 6.5 points out of 7. The most interesting game at this event was between the champion and the second runner up, Aaroosh Reddy, who had a score of 5 points, in the final round.
Aarush began this game with the English Opening, and Aaroosh added pressure to a pinned knight, which led to an early exchange of Queens. This was soon followed by Aaroosh winning a pawn, and Aarush regained this loss by winning a minor piece. The game got further intense when Aarush posed a Knight fork on two of Aaroosh’s Rooks, giving him a massive overall advantage.
There was no going back from here, and Aarush converted this advantage into a win on the 26th move with a back rank checkmate. In the second position, we had Saket Reddy with a score of 6 points.
On Sunday, September 12th, we had the Chess KLUB Classic Arena Tournament where we had Sabarish Kailasam in first place who had a perfect win rate of 100%. Sabarish played his best game against the second runner up of the event, Adhvik Manoj, who had a win rate of 67% in the final round. The game began with the Queen Pawn Opening and Sabarish gained control of the center early into the game.
In the middle game, Adhvik made an error while exchanging pawns which caused excess pressure on a pinned Rook, which allowed Sabarish to win this Rook. This disadvantage forced Adhvik to resign on the 29th move.
In second place, we had Nihal Tej Gundu who had a great win rate of 89%.
In the Weekly Classic Tournament held on Sunday, we had Parv Parikh at the top of the winner list with a brilliant win rate of 88%. Parv played an exceptionally engaging game against the runner up at this event, who was Aariv Upadhyay who had a win rate of 60%. The game began with the Three Knights Opening and Parv had two double pawns in the opening and one a central pawn.
Parv brought his Queen out early in the game and posed a serious attack on Aariv’s King. The attack progressed and the only way for Aariv to defend his King was to sacrifice his Queen. He chose to resign on the 19th move instead. The second runner up at this event was Venkata M who had a win rate of 50%.
The Intermediate Battle Arena was held on Thursday, where we had Ishan Priya in first place with an excellent win rate of 71% followed by Ishan Ghate in second place with a win rate of 80% and Parv Parikh in third place with a win rate of 43%.
Ishan Priya played a spectacular game against Ishan Ghate in the final round. The game began with the Englund Gambit and Ishan Priya became a pawn up in the Opening. They exchanged Queens in the middle game and Ishan Priya won another pawn.
As the game progressed towards the end game, Ishan Priya posed a Rook pin on Ishan Ghate’s King and Bishop which gave Ishan Priya a good advantage. Ishan Priya then checkmated Ishan Ghate’s King with the Rook and Bishop on the 40th move.
This week saw some exceptional games and a refreshing winner list. We hope to see similar results every week.
