Varuntej Maddineni – Champion of the Week

Chess KLUB hosts weekly tournaments to allow students to explore their games practically. Let’s take a look at the exceptional games that took place this week and the spectacular winner list.

On 30th October, we had the Chess KLUB Swiss Open Tournament with 46 participants competing against each other across 7 rounds. The champion at this event was a veteran at our Chess KLUB tournaments – Sabarish Kailasam, who had an excellent score of 6.5 points.

Sabarish played an exciting game against the runner up Parv Parikh, who had a great score of 5.5 points. The game began with Bowdler Attack variation of the Sicilian Defense, and Parv became a pawn up in the Opening. The two then exchanged their minor pieces and a Rook each followed by their Queens, and progressed to the end game.

The two then exchanged their Rooks, and the game was between equal pawns and the two Kings, followed by which the two exchanged their pawns and Parv was left with a pawn on the ‘h’ file on the 72nd move the game ended as a stalemate. In third place, we had Joshith Sai Vurimi with a score of 5 points.

On the last day of October, we held the Chess KLUB Classic Arena Tournament, where we had Adithiyaa Vasudevan in first place with an impressive win rate of 82%, and once again, we had Parv Parikh in second place with a win rate of 75%. The winner and runner up played a brilliant game against each other that began with the Italian Game Opening. Parv then won a pawn in the middle game, and Adithiyaa became a Bishop up and exposed Parv’s King.

Adithiyaa then won multiple pawns, and the two players exchanged their Queens soon after. Adithiyaa then created a passed pawn that he converted into a Queen, which Parv had to kill by sacrificing his Rook. Adithiyaa then made another Queen and checkmated Parv with his Rook and Queen on the 57th move. The second runner up was Saket Reddy, who had a win rate of 67%.

We hosted the Intermediate Battle Arena on Tuesday with Varuntej Maddineni at the top of the winner list with a perfect win rate of 100%, with his best game being against the runner up Ishan Priya, who had a win rate of 67%. Varuntej began the game with the French Defense Opening and Ishan exposed Varuntej’s King and posed an attack on Varuntej’s King in the middle game.

Varuntej then used his two Bishops and a semi-open Rook file to attack Ishan’s King, followed by which the two players then exchanged their Queens. After this exchange, Ishan was at a disadvantage which forced him to resign on the 22nd move. The third seed at this tournament was Venkata Haricharish Maddeboina.

Finally, we had the Weekly Classic Arena Tournament with Venkata Haricharish Maddeboina in first place with a fantastic win rate of 60%, followed by Aadhithya Anandaramakrishna in second place with a win rate of 50%, followed by Aariv Upadhyay in third place with a win rate of 40%.

The most interesting game of the evening was between the winner and the runner up that began with the Italian Game Opening. Aadhithya won a pawn in the middle game, which was soon followed by Aadhithya falling for a checkmate on the 21st move.

This week saw some nail-biting end games and a refreshing winner list, and we hope to see similar results every week.

Congratulations to all the winners.