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Monday, November 10, 2014

Quite a Sweat in the AC Room!



When someone tells you chess players are punctual, you can believe them. Yes, even in Mumbai!
Almost all the participating men came on time to room 707 in the new building, where the boards were neatly arranged for the royal game to start. Only one team – SP Jain boys, had trouble arriving; they went to 707 in Mithibai building and phoned the author and said “It says School of Business Management and I am in 707! Where are you?” Poor guys, had to explain to them. Their captain, Shyam, spoke in Tamil, I had some old memories :P (Made friends easily with him - yeah, I am a little proud of my mother tongue, so what!) To the action now…
True to the IIM tag, the IIM Indore Mumbai folks were hooked to the books, well, binders – right from around 2 PM. And our stars SP Jain famously arrived to start their head-to-head match at 4:30 PM. The result of this match truly depicts what will happen when one highly enthusiastic bunch of guys meet three people who live with their books – SP Jain blanked IIM-I three games to nil. With that, they were through to the Semi-Finals.

            The SP Jain folk (the team on the left) – Shyam, Ashish, Abhishek

Courtesy NITIE sports festival, we already knew the Sydenhams team. They reported well in advance, at 4 PM for their round. With JBiMS guys coming in at a little over 5 PM, the encounter began smoothly at 5:30 PM. The game was intense. In the end, superior experience paid off and Sydenhams won 3-0. This time, the victory was not as easy as the margin suggested. These SIMSREE guys are real fun to hang out with! They waited to know if they could have another game in, which unfortunately, did not happen.

The JBIMS folks showed a lot of interest coming into the playing hall

With two semi-finalists spotted, the two NMIMS teams had to sweat it out in the remaining two rounds in the round of 8. The NITIE team wanted to know the board order before beginning. Well, they had a point – generally all 4 boards start at the same time. Here, we do not do that. So, I had to oblige initially. Somehow they agreed starting off, understanding the practical difficulties during these events. Again, the NITIE sports meet experience! The big match between NM Warriors and NITIE began at 6:30 PM.
We knew it was going to be tough. The board order was changed; it was not the same as the previous time we played in NITIE last month. Captain Natarajan won easily on board 3. Neel Shah found the going tough in the initial phase of the game on board two. Board one, ak was White against a strong Rohit. The match was evenly poised even after 45 minutes.


                                    Yours truly(l) in deep thought (also posing)

 With both games going deep into time pressure mode (under 5 minutes on the clock), the match-play experience paid off once again; both Rohit and Sandesh (Neel’s opponent) blundered in mutual time trouble and Warriors romped home 3-0. Again, don’t go by the victory margin – ask the spectators!

The captain of chess team, Natarajan (seen here with his mobile) plays Carrom also

The last match of the day was between NM Wizards and KJ Somaiya, which happened after a lot of rescheduling. Thanks to a few good men like Natarajan and Mahajan, we could get the match underway on the first evening. Though it happened late, the match was no way less in intensity. Parth, Krishna Kanth and Rohit Mahajan played in that order for Wizards. The playing strength of the opponents here was much higher than what we had witnessed in XL or NITIE.


l-r, Parth, Neel (spectator here), Rohit Mahajan “This was difficult to see…”

Both sides went all out for a humdinger. In the end, KJ Somaiya came out unscathed. The score read 3-0 in their favour.
The day was tough, with great games and mixed emotions. Surprisingly, all 4 matches ended in a 3-0 verdict. There were some great games. In a few of those, the player’s will proved stronger than skill. Ultimately, the best teams went through to the semi-finals, which will be played on Sunday.

That brings us to the end of noiseless action that happened in 707 on November 7. Hope you enjoyed the express report of the royal game!
Until next time,

Keep smiling!
And chess lovers…follow Anand – Carlsen World Championship match starting Nov 8!

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