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Indians Will
Do Well
By Arvind Aaron
Indian kids are hopeful of turning the World Youth
Chess Championship into the same medal hunting ground as the Asian Youth
Chess Championship. A total of 43 players and coaches were cleared by the
Government at full cost to it and two managers were cleared at no cost.
The World Under-8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 Open and Girls Championships will
run from October 18-29 at Batumi in Soviet Georgia. Besides the entries,
India is also fielding entries of others who are able to afford to foot
the plane ticket and donor entry fee.
The organisers are repeating what was done in previous age group
championships as to distribution of
bulletins containing games and results. It is restricted to one per
delegation and it is the responsibility of that person to shares with
others. Perhaps it will be right for small nations with less than twenty
entrants. India is fielding nearly 100 entries and sharing one bulletin
will be far too few. India's size also makes the task of sending these
people the most difficult one for the Indian Chess Federation.
The domestic playing strength of Indians has consistently risen and our
visitors are returning without Elo gains or Elo negative. With 2552 rated
players and counting, our kids have formed the revolution themselves after
the one initiated by legend Viswanathan Anand. Players like N.Srinath and
S.P.Sethuraman and others are in touch with Anand for that occasional
encouragement.
Last year, India won medals - both gold! Sahaj Grover won the World
Under-10 Championship and N.Srinath took the World Under-12 title at
Belfort. This time we are also looking for a wider area of titles in the
girls and more medals. The training factory is in full swing in Andhra
Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Players like Asian Under-12 and 14 champions,
Padmini Rout and Bhakti Kulkarni should find the beach in Batumi closer to
the ones in the Orissa and Goa coasts. Weather should also be good at the
start and then get colder as the event progresses. Nevertheless, swimmers
can have a great time in the Black Sea.
India contingent is a mix of talent and number. The ambitious and
determined ones should make it to the medals. Our rivals are the hosts
Georgians themselves and the Chinese and Russians. China does not have a
budget for Asian Age Group Chess events and our players had smooth rides
there. Here, they should offer us stiff resistence. First time Indians can
impress since games scores of Indians are not yet available on the
Internet and it is difficult to prepare against such Indians. Although the
Indians are catching up with digital preparations of Europeans, the recent
example at the World Junior, Yerevan showed how Harika fell in the final
round to the ultimate champion Shen Yang. Harika repeated the early c5
variation against the Slav defence with white and was totally taken out in
the opening itself.
Chennai girl Pon N.Krithikha is playing the Girls Under-14 section and can
upset a few favourites there. High rated, Elena Tairova of Russia can be
expected to win the Girls Under-16 section this time. This girl will grow
in the Alexandra Kosteniuk kind as far as chess goes. Batumi and Georgia
are known chess centres. Georgia had produced a series of world women
champions until China's Xie Jun put an end to that in 1991.
Players like Pentela Harikrishna and Koneru Humpy emerged successful from
the these age group events of 1996 at Menorca, Spain and 1997 at Cannes,
France. Others built on it like Aarthie Ramaswamy, Deep Sengupta etc. by
winning in later years. Though it will be hard to say which Indian boy or
girl will win the gold medal this time, it can be confirmed that our
players will do well.
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Published on 20.10.2006
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