Aicf to Start Indian Chess League, Bid for Chess Olympiad

New Delhi, February 14: The newly elected president of the All-India Chess Federation, Dr Sanjay Kapoor, unveiled a blueprint to turn the country into a chess superpower here on Sunday, starting with the decision to bid for the next available Chess Olympiad and commencing a high-profile Indian Chess League soon.

Caption: The newly-elected president of the All India Chess Federation Sanjay Kapoor (second from left) was felicitated at the start of the Annual General Body meeting in New Delhi on Sunday. Also seen are, from left, AICF secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan, Delhi Chess Association secretary A K Verma and AICF treasurer Naresh Sharma.

"We want India to become the chess destination for the world. We have drawn out a detailed plan to achieve this goal,” Dr Kapoor said at a press conference, immediately after a power-packed AGM.
He revealed that a foolproof bid would soon be prepared to bag the coveted world event as and when the process would begin.
“For a long time, we have been keen on starting the Indian Chess League with an international flavour to popularise the game even more. The first edition, following the franchise-model, will be organised before this year is through,” Dr Kapoor, who is also the chairman of the Kanpur Cricket Association, said.
Dr Kapoor added that the AGM had also decided to host the Women’s Grand Prix, which is an important part of the world women’s championship cycle, to give a huge boost to women players in the country.
“Not just that, we are also going to initiate an AICF-Chess in Schools program to popularise chess at the school level. All our 33-State affiliates will be implementing this simultaneously. We want every school-going kid in India to play chess. This will help in developing smarter future generations, thanks to the life-skill benefits that come naturally from the game,” Dr Kapoor said.
Among the other major decisions taken at the AGM are: single window registration for all players, establishment of a Centre of Excellence and Organisation of a Super Tournament.
“The Super Tournament will see many top-level players in action. It will give our higher-ranked GMs an opportunity to compete with the best in business at home while also help upcoming youngsters improve by watching them from close quarters,” Dr Kapoor explained.
Honorary secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan underpinned the importance of the single window registration process too, saying that from now on every player will be registered for his or her district, State as well the AICF itself.
“The Centre of Excellence will help tap and train talent at the grassroots level, with the ultimate vision of infusing at least 10 players from India in the Top 50 rankings of the world,” Mr Chauhan said.

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Indian Chess Set Gifted by Elena Burmistrova to Russian Museum

Moscow: Elena Burmistrova, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee/Director General of Gazprom Export, has presented the CFR Chess Museum with a unique art gift for the New Year. 

It comes from a limited edition of handmade chess sets titled "Indian," manufactured at the porcelain enterprise "Delta-X" of Kislovodsk in the 1990s. To design the chessmen, the artist A. Lyubkin resorted to ancient legends and tales' motives. Pieces of gilt and overglaze painting join the combat on a chessboard of marble and serpentine stone, with a unique house for chess pieces being a rare and distinctive feature of this particular set. The tradition of tucking the pieces away "to rest" in a dedicated "accommodation" instead of a dark wooden box dates back to several centuries ago. This is both a respect for the wise game's porcelain participants and a practical solution to keep beautiful pieces on the table as a kind of display.

"Indian" chess set by A. Lyubkin takes an honorable place in the exhibition of the famous G. Alexandrov's Museum of Porcelain Chess in St. Petersburg. It is now at the full display to visitors of the Russian Federation of Chess as well.

Andrey Filatov, President of the Chess Federation of Russia, expresses his gratitude to Elena Burmistrova for such a valuable New Year’s present.

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True Story of Chess Kid Tani: I Believe in Miracles!

Excerpted with permission from My Name is Tani by Craig Borlase and Tanitoluwa Adewumi published by HarperCollins.

Prologue 

My name is Tani, and my family says I like to ask a lot of questions. They’re right. I like puzzles. I like riddles. I like trying to figure out why things happen and how things work.

But things have been different lately. Instead of asking the questions, I’ve been the one trying to answer them. A lot of people have wanted to know all kinds of things about me and my life. They want to know what life was like for me and how I feel about the way things have changed. They want me to tell my story, and I want to tell it, but there’s never enough time to say everything that’s in my head.

So this book is going to be my answer.

But if I’m going to tell you my story, I need to start by saying that I don’t remember much about Nigeria. I know that I was six years old when these really bad people called Boko Haram tried to kill my dad and we had to leave — but honestly, I was asleep most of the times they came looking for my dad, so you’d have to ask him about that.

What I do remember about life in Nigeria is playing soccer and my brother, Austin, trying to teach me chess and how one day I was watching the news on the TV and there was this airplane pilot on it who had just done something amazing. He was Nigerian like me, and there must have been a really serious problem with the plane because everyone was excited about the fact that he had landed safely, and everyone survived. From that moment on I wanted to be a pilot. It’s not because of money, though. Being a pilot makes you rich, but I don’t mean money rich. I liked the idea of doing something like that, to help people.

I remember a lot about life in America. Like how when we moved to New York I learned about chess properly this time and discovered that the very best players in the world are called grand masters, and so, from then on, I started to think that it might be good to be a grand master too. And then one day Coach Shawn actually took me to meet Fabiano, who is the number-two chess player in the whole world! He shook my hand and we talked, and from that moment on, I decided that I definitely wanted to be a grandmaster.

And then something happened.

I won a chess competition, and lots and lots and lots of people wanted to talk to me. It wasn’t just people from New York or even America. People from all over the world wanted to know my story. Some of them still do.

A lot of the people I have spoken to ask me about chess. They say things like how has chess changed your life? Or, what do you like most about playing chess? I mostly give them the same answer to both questions, which is chess has taught me how to do deep thinking. 

Sometimes people laugh when they hear me say that, but I don’t see how it’s very funny.

The more I think about all this, the more I know that I can’t answer either of those questions quickly. I 

need a lot more than one minute to be able to explain everything. And I don’t think I can even do it all myself because there’s so much that I don’t remember.

So the best way to tell my story is to have my parents help me. They know all the details of everything 

that’s happened, and they’re also my heroes. None of this would’ve even happened if it hadn’t been for them.

I would have asked Austin to help tell this story, too, but he likes basketball a lot more than he likes 

writing. But he’s still my hero as well.

After I won the chess tournament and spoke to all those people, life changed really quickly for all of us. 

Recently I’ve been thinking again about being a pilot. Since talking to everyone, I now know that there are a lot of places I’ve not been to, and if I was a pilot, maybe I could go see them. I could fly to China, Japan, Arizona, Washington, DC, Kentucky, Turkey, England. I want to go to these places and live there for maybe one whole year or maybe just five months. I read in a book that the average person lives to be seventy-one years old, but I think I’m not going to live the average. I think I’m going to live to be more than one hundred. So maybe I’ll do 

both—be a grand master and a pilot too. I’d like that.

I don’t know what I’m going to be. My dad says that’s okay.

But I do know this much. I believe in miracles.

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Aman Goel Wins CCBW Bruce Lee Memorial on Lichess

Lucknow, July 20, 2020: Aman Goel (Sil3entAman) won the Remembering Bruce Lee Memorial CCBW Global Online Lichess Tournament on July 20.
Shaan Garg (brrrruuuuuhh) came in a creditable second with Enaith Habibullah (Enaith) standing third.  PreciousBansal (preciouschesschd) was the Best Girl (overall third).

Aman, playing strategically, put up some nice ideas in the Sicilian and English. In an interesting Najdorf battle, Aman polished off the runner-up with a back rank mate.
Shan Garg dropped only two games for a creditable second playing totally unlike Aman with tactical mad fire on the chess board.
Enaith Habibullah, home from boarding school, showed remarkable resilience in his 1.e4 games to take the third place.
Precious Bansal, held her own, amidst the strong competition to easily pick up the Best Girl Prize without much difficulty.

Martial Artist legend Bruce Lee's poem, "Be water, my friend" is the philosophy for Chess Club Black and White (CCBW).

"Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

A nice quora post explains it as, "Water is easy-going. Water doesn't fuss, it doesn't push, or pull. It fills the space allowed, no more, no less. This saying is basically to remind you to just relax, go with the flow, be present and in the moment; let things happen and enjoy that you're there to take it all in. Be water, my friend."
You can find a very nice podcast on the quote on the official Bruce Lee website at this link.

DO like the CCBW FACEBOOK PAGE PLEASE 

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