CHENNAI: Thirteen-year-old R Ilamparthi won the Mrs Meera Memorial 1st International Fide-rated Open chess championship held at Jerusalem College of Engineering. Ilamparthi, who won the recently held world youth Under 14 chess championship in Romania, was in splendid form. He outplayed many experienced players in the tournament and in the final round he beat the skilful NB Hari Madhavan.
Ilamparthi scored 8 points and won the title, a cash prize and a trophy. Three players Ilamparthi, IM Harikrishnan and Gugan G scored 8 points each, but on the tie-break, they finished first to third respectively. “I am very happy to win the Meera Memorial international Fide-rated Open chess tourney.
The field was strong and I really had to work hard to earn the title. The close games and scores will tell one and all the quality of the tournament,” said Ilamparthi. Earlier, he took part in the Asian Youth Championship in Bali, Indonesia. He won the Asian Youth Rapid gold medal in the Under-18 category.
Today chess involves specialised coaching and regular travel abroad to play in various tournaments in order to raise the bar and also improve the Elo rating. “We need to constantly travel and play in as many tournaments as possible against top players in order to get exposure and improve one’s quality of play. So all this prize money that we get comes in handy. Next month I will be playing quite a few tournaments in Spain and Sweden and will be preparing for the same,” he said.
Hari Madhavan, Arjun Krishnamachari and Srihari who scored 7.5 points each finished fourth to sixth respectively. Former national chess player DV Ravi, MD, Shriram Capital Limited distributed the prizes in the presence of Ramesh, principal, of Jerusalem College of Engineering.
Top six prize winners
Ilamparthi R Rs 25,000; Harikrishnan A Ra Rs 20,000; Gugan G Rs 15,000; Hari Madhavan NB Rs 10,000; Arjun Krishnamachari Rs 9,000; Srihari L Rs 8,000.
Final round: Top 20 boards
Ilamparthi R 8 bt Hari Madhavan NB 7.5; IM Harikrishnan A Ra 8 bt FM Harsh Suresh 7; IM Praveen Kumar C 7 lost to Gugan G 8; Srihari L 7.5 bt AGM Sa Kannan 6.5; Arjun C Krishnamachari 7.5 bt Narayan Iyengar 6.5; Ayushh Ravikumar 7 drew with IM Ravi Thandalam Shanmugam 7; Mari Arul S 7 drew with Hari Ganesh 7; Sai Vishwesh C 7 bt Swarnamala B 6; Barath Kalyan M 7 bt Mahish SA 6; Vignesh B 6 lost to Danvanth R7; Tanish Ragavan S 6 lost to Sai Alagappan S 7; Haridev S 7 bt Surjeet DV 6; Karthikeyan G 6 lost to Umashankar A 7; Liban Reyhan MM 7 bt Suthershun A 6; Nithin AV 6 lost to Vaibhav A 7; Vaisnav A 7 bt Shyam Ganesh R 6; Thiruvazhagan S 6 lost to Vijayakumar Rishi 7; Gokul Ramesh 6 lost to Poorna Sri MK 7; Pooja Shree 6 lost to Rohit S 6; Shankar A 5.5 bt Bala Sanjay JG 5.5.