GM Vaibhav Suri wins the 2nd ChessBase India online blitz!

The 2nd ChessBase India prize money online blitz was held on 30th of April 2017. It celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kunte's Chess Academy. Building up on the success of the first Fischer online tournament we had increased the total prize fund from Rs.31,000 to Rs.40,000. Nearly 130 players participated, of which 15 of them were grandmasters!

The time control of the event was 11 rounds of 3 minutes each. The first prize was Rs.11,111. The round began at 10 minutes past six and the tournament ended somewhere around 8.30 p.m. The joy of playing chess from the comfort of your home is something that the Indians are really enjoying thanks to these online prize money events.

The last round of the tournament was filled with great tension. We had four players with a score of 8.0/10. It was GM Vaibhav Suri, GM R.R. Laxman, GM Diptayan Ghosh and GM Debashis Das. Vaibhav was paired against Laxman and Diptayan was up against Debashis. The two youngsters Diptayan and Debashis made a tame draw in just 21 moves. This is quite typical of Diptayan, who likes to take things pragmatically. He was slightly better and yet offered a draw to secure the second place.

This left the door open for Vaibhav to win his final round game and move to 9.0/11 where he could not be touched! He did just that and scored a fine victory over one of India's finest blitz players Laxman.

After the event Vaibhav wrote to ChessBase India, "I think conducting such events is a really good initiative to attract more people to chess. Online blitz is casual and a lot more fun than the typical situation what we are accustomed to.

The tournament, for me personally, was quite interesting and full of really funny games. The quality of game obviously goes down in online blitz but I guess the one who has stronger nerves usually prevails in such short time controls.

 
Clearly, I got very lucky with the tournament situation. Lalith was leading the event since the very beginning and I guess after round 7 there was some issue with his internet connection which kind of gave hope to other players! Overall, it feels quite good to win such an event. Looking forward to more such tournaments."

Diptayan is a super solid player. Even in the blitz tournament where everyone is going for the blood, he managed to draw three games. He lost in the second round to GM Shyam Sundar (Kereslover) but came back to finish second. Some of his wins were really high class. He managed to beat not only the eventual winner of the tournament Vaibhav Suri, but also the top seed B. Adhiban.

Ankit got to know about the tournament only a few minutes before the round was about to begin. With the huge number of registrations to be done, we were just about able to enroll him. He lost two games to Shyam Nikhil and N.Srinath. However, he managed to win the all crucial last round against Adhiban. What a topsy turvy game that was!

Ankit doesn't play too much chess recently, so this victory was quite special for him. Talking about the tournament to ChessBase India he said, "It was very nice. Until now I have only played online tournaments in ICC but this was very strong as well as well organized. I enjoyed it and looking forward for the next one!"

"The tournament was fun until the last round! I still can't get over the fact how I lost the game. But with this blitz tournament I realized some of the points where I need to improve."

Laxman was playing the Selangor Open in Malysia. He had double rounds that day. He won both the games, then played a blitz tournament at the venue which also he won! Finally he rushed to the mall to pick up some food, gobbled it up quickly and ran to his room to get ready for the online tournament! "I started off well, but by the end I was completely exhausted", said Laxman. We are in complete awe of this man's passion for the game and thank him for participating at the online blitz event in spite of other engagements.

Final Standings with Prize money:

Final crosstable:

Lucky prizes:

Places 20,30,40,50,60,70 get the lucky prize and Rs.800 each.

Young talents:

Nihal has already proved what a great blitz player he is. You mustn't miss this video of him beating Evgeny Postny at a blitz game in Spain. He managed to almost beat Adhiban at this event, before a mouse slip proved to be pretty fatal. 

Praggnanandhaa finished 18th with 7.0/11 and his sister Vaishali scored 6.0/11. Vaishali fresh from Reykjavik success, where she beat two grandmasters, was in great form as she defeated strong players like Ratnakaran, Fenil Shah and drew with Nihal Sarin and Mitrabha Guha.

What happened to Anji?

The million dollar question on everyone's mind after why Kattappa killed Bahubali, was what happened to Anji? Anji is the playchess id of Lalith Babu. After winning the first ChessBase India online blitz with a score of 9.0/9, Lalith was in scintillating form for the second event with 7.0/7 start. On his way to this score he had already beaten some really strong players like Dhulipalla Bala Chandra Prasad, Anwesh Upadhyay, Mitrabha Guha and also Adhiban! He already had 1.5 point lead over the field.

Suddenly after seven rounds, he was logged out from Playchess and he had become a guest. His attempts to join the tournament proved unsuccessful. Lalith describes the incident in the following manner, "After finishing the 7th round I was talking to Debashis and Anwesh in playchess about how the tournament was going and how they are doing? And suddenly I got a message saying that server is under maintenance you will be automatically logged out. I felt something is wrong because normally the server maintenance takes place in the morning time. I tried to log out and login again and it was a shock to me this time I got message in pink letters saying that you need a higher rank to enter this room and I understood that my account had turned into a guest."

So why did this happen with Lalith. Playchess expert Martin Fischer explains, "As I have seen, Anji used client 7.28. The actual version is 8.2. Also his account was not premium."

Well here's some important bit of advice for everyone for the next playchess tournament. Update your Playchess software to the latest version and ensure that you have a premium account. It is one of the reasons why we provide you with one month serial key before the start of the event.

Lalith after reading this article wrote to us, "I felt really bad after the incident because the first question that comes to everyone's mind is that this guy must be cheating. That's a huge remark in a player's career. I thank Sagar for sorting it out and writing the report on what exactly happened."

Well Lalith for your 16.0/16 in ChessBase India online tournaments, we are going to give you a premium membership so that this doesn't happen again! And for all other players, Anji is still the man to beat in the next event! As of now he is unbeaten!

Two letters from our participants:

We received a lot of congratulatory mails for conducting the second online prize money tournament. Here we reproduce two such emails:

Harsh Kanoje, Nagpur:

It's a pleasure to play in the ChessBase India online tournament. I never played on board match with an International Master in a tournament but here I got a chance to play against Ratnakaran sir.

What ChessBase India is doing to Indian chess  is superb. Hope one day Anand also gets the same recognition like Sachin and Kohli .

My best wishes always with you.

Pavan BNB, Mumbai:

First of all I would like to say congratulations for organizing such a mammoth event smoothly without any delays/disturbances. It is really a great platform for the budding chess players and chess enthusiasts (who can't travel more often for the tournaments as players I'm one among them) Playing these tournaments with such a strong field always been a great experience. Especially when you are paired against titled players (one of the best players in the country) it gives lots of encouragement and inspiration! I really enjoyed my tournament session (played with GM Vaibhav Suri in the first round and he became the champion in the end also played with IM Padmini Rout in the 9th round and I drew with her) also lost some games because of time pressure etc. ChessBase India is doing a great job and looking forward to hear from you about the future events like 3rd online blitz and many more (I believe you won't stop this journey for sure.)

10 tales contest:

We received quite a few emails with players sharing their most interesting chess stories. These winners of this contest will be announced in a separate article.

3rd ChessBase India online blitz  tournament:

We are planning to hold the 3rd ChessBase India online blitz tournament in the near future. We will be enhancing the prize fund and also try to ensure that the best players of our country participate. Of course, we would need your support to make it a success. So do participate and experience the joy of playing a super strong chess tournament from the comfort of your living room! :)

As always we thank our Tournament Director Halsagar Chincholimath from Belgaum for conducting the tournament in a smooth and professional manner.

Download the PGN file of all the games of the tournament

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