In the Open Rated category, we had the most skilled and experienced players of Chess KLUB participate with Kiran Vangeepuram as our runner up with an incredible score of 4 / 5 followed by Saketh Chavva in third place with an excellent score 0f 3.5 / 5.

An exceptionally skilled match took place between Advit Gupta and Kiran.

Kiran played the Sicilian Defense.

The two continued to maintain an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages till Advit missed a pin and became an exchange down. Kiran then used this advantage to pose multiple attacks on Advit’s king and invaded his territory. Advit tried to shift the attention by trying to attack Kiran’s king but Kiran had Advit’s king surrounded from all sides and ended the game with a checkmate on the 31st move with two rooks and a queen. 

In the under 1000 rated category we had Joshith Vurmi as the topper of the winner list with a wonderful score of 4 / 5 followed by Sanjey Ramachandran and Aarav Patel in second and third place respectively with both winning a total of 4 out of 5 games.

Although the three had the same scores, Joshith ranked number one due to the tiebreaker. Joshith and Aarav played an interesting match in the 4th round on the second board. Aarav opened with the Queen’s Gambit and the game continued to be in an equal position for the first 35 moves after which the game moved to the end game. The end game saw the two opponents have three pawns each and a white square bishop each.

On the 45th move, the two agreed to a draw. 

The Under 500 rated category had Aarav Khurana at the top of the winner list with an excellent score of 4 / 5 with Vivaan Singh in the second place with the same score.

In the third place, we had Kanishq Bhandari with a score of 3 / 5. Our champion and runner up played an exceptional game in the final round that decided the final result. Aarav opened with the French defence and the game was relatively equal till Vivaan exchanged his two minor pieces for Aarav’s rook. Aarav gained a huge advantage when Vivaan blundered his rook at the beginning of the end game.  Aarav then traded the remaining pieces and ended the game with two passer pawns and his knight and his bishop when Vivaan resigned on the 66th move. 

Finally, we had the unrated category with Anish Aakram as our champion with an admirable score of 4 / 5 and Rishit Nagpal and Rishab Ghosh as our first and second runner ups with the same score as well.

The first round itself was action-packed where our champion and runner up were paired against each other. Anish tried the Scholars mate and blundered his queen on the sixth move. On the 11th move, Rishit made a knight blunder followed by a queen blunder on the 15th move. This gave Anish a massive advantage and he was now back in the game. The game then progressed with Anish being a rook and a minor piece up.

The end saw Anish trying to do a two rook checkmate before which Rishit resigned just a move before the final checkmate. 

It makes our team feel immensely proud and successful to see such great performances at this month’s USCF tournament and we hope to see similar performances next month with some fresh names on the winner list. 

Congratulations to all the winners.