Mumbai : International Master Visakh N R of Tamil Nadu broke a nine-year jinx to lead an Indian sweep in the 9th Mumbai Mayor International Open Chess Tournament 2016, presented by Zee Learn Ltd and co-sponsored by LIC and Ankit Gems.
The 17-year-old Visakh, showing chess maturity much beyond his years, drew his final round match with GM Diptayan Ghosh, and was tied for the top place on 8 points with Ghosh and Chandigarh’s Gusain Himal. The arbiters declared Visakh champion on a better tie-break as he drew with GM Diptayan, the mutual decision coming after 16 moves. Gusain also finished on 8 points thanks to his final round win over IM Vikramaditya Kulkarni.
Visakh is the first Indian to win this prestigious event in its 9-year history. Visakh won Rs 3 lakhs for his efforts, while Ghosh took home Rs 2 lakhs and Gusain Rs 1 lakh.
While this was Visakh’s biggest victory, the soft spoken player who began playing chess at the age of 9, said his win over GM Amonatov Farrukh is the high point of his young chess career.
The depth of Indian chess players was further vindicated by another five of them finishing among the 8 players in joint second place.
The game between Visakh and GM Ghosh started with a Queen’s Indian and turned into a Dutch Defence. On the 9th move Diptayan sacrificed a pawn on d5 for better play but both of the players did not take any risk and agreed for a draw in just 16 moves.
Visakh N R who hails from Tamil Nadu started playing chess at the age of 9 after his father who is also his Psychological coach introduced him to the game .He then started training under Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte , he mostly trains with him online and occasionally travels to Pune for one on one sessions. Visakh skipped 2 years of Studies to concentrate on his Chess career. He mentioned that beating GM Amonatov Farrukh was his biggest achievement and winning the tournament was never on his mind as he was taking one game at a time.
