Rohit India's Latest Star
By Arvind Aaron

Gogineni Rohit played his best chess of his career to become our latest International Master in the 5th Parsvnath International Open at Delhi last month. Along with that amazing performance, he also won a maiden 9-game Grand Master norm. "I want to become a Grand Master before the end of the year," said Rohit, 18-year old first year Engineering Student from Hyderabad's GRIET.

My next event is the Aeroflot Open in Moscow but I am not preparing chess but working for my exams said the Electronics and Communication student. His backing is complete in the form of his parents. His father is a real estate businessman and his mother is a house wife.

Rohit's favouring player is no surprise, our own Viswathan Anand. I like his style of play, he said. At Hyderabad, Rohit trains together with Lanka Ravi and also works from his laptop. His earlier trainers were Ch Sathyanarayana, J.Ramakrishna and G.N.Gopal. He is from a village, Gudavalli, near Guntur and he credits chess growth in that area to Harikrishna.

I have to mention that the AICF is doing a great job by sending the Junior team also for overseas chess events, said Rohit. Andhra Pradesh is known for its big support for chess but Rohit thinks it is not as high as it once was a few years back. He finished fourth at Valsad and is a junior player in the senior top six.

Rohit has been living in Guntur and Hyderabad in the last few years. He has a younger brother. There is no chess player in his family and he is the first. He follows tennis and watches major grandslam events. When he is free he watches movies and the languages are in Telugu, Hindi and Tamil! He said he picked up his Tamil after starting to travel for the sake of chess.

Rohit has no sponsor now but had been sponsored by ONGC a few years back. He is hoping to add a hefty 40 Elo in the next list after his exploits in the National A and the Parsvnath Open. He is on 2392 now and should race upwards soon. That is when the sponsors would line behind him.

His best games are wins with black against Romanov and Amim Bassem at Greece in the World Under-14 Chess Championship. His best game at Delhi last month was the win against Iuldachev. He finished second to Alexey Dreev and was ahead of the other Indians for a dream run. We are sure to read more of Rohit.

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Published on : 12th Feb, 2007