Lalith Babu wins the Fischer Online Blitz extravaganza!

The turnout to the first prize money tournament held by ChessBase India in the memory of Bobby Fischer was humongous. We received 148 entries with six grandmasters and twelve International Masters fighting for the top prize of Rs.10,000 (Total Prize fund Rs.31,000). Of course the prize money was an attraction, but more than the money it was the fact that you could sit at the comfort of your home and play a high class tournament is surely a sweet feeling. All you have to do is fire up your laptop and get going. 

It was a 3+0 time control event with 9 rounds. It took place in the Vishy Anand Arena in the ChessBase India room on Playchess. There was a slight delay in the start of the event, but at 6.15 p.m. (15 minutes delay) the tournament started and within the next two hours everyone could already switch off their laptops and get ready for dinner! :)

Speaking to us after the event Lalith said, "This was a great experience. It was really nice to play a blitz tournament on Playchess after a long time. In 3+0 you are unable to form a strategy after getting a good position out of the opening, but it is nonetheless very exciting. I particularly liked my win against GM Laxman, although I must admit that I was a bit lucky against Venkatesh!"

While many would think that this blitz tournament was predominantly played for fun, think again. Lalith after winning the event spoke to the Hindu newspaper and said, "This victory is significant, for it boosted my sagging confidence." And at the on-going Inter PSPB Lalith was the reason for Indian Oil's success as he beat Sasikiran Krishnan. Somewhere this blitz victory did make a difference!

Final Standings

The prizes for the top finishers

This is what Venkatesh had to say about the event: "It was a well organized and fun-filled event. Personally I enjoyed every moment of the tournament, since it was 3 minutes without increment it was even more thrilling! Against Swapnil (Dhopade) it was so exciting and at one point my heart was pounding because I was running in seconds and I think I checkmated when I had 0.6 seconds left!

Overall it was very enjoyable and I hope ChessBase India conducts more such events in future. Of course we (Indian players) are eagerly waiting to participate in such tournaments.

Here's is Venkatesh's best victory from the event:

Here's a very nice CRG attack:

When the tournament was announced Laxman called me and congratulated ChessBase India for this initiative. "We need more such events in India. As you already know I really love online chess because you do not lose anything and have a chance to enjoy and have fun." After the event got over, I once again received a call from him, "It was a great event. And I really hope the next one will be organized soon. I can even sponsor a part of the prize fund for the next event!" Laxman was so excited about the tournament that he called a lot of his friends to participate. One of them was CJ Arvind, a very strong player in the early 2000s, who now resides in the US.

Laxman had good chances of finishing second, but he botched it up against the youngest IM in the world R. Praggnanandhaa in the penultimate round.

Here's another of his saves against IM N. Srinath where he could have easily got a zero!

That's the place where you can usually find Sai Krishna GV - Inside a classroom! Rated 2339, Sai Krishna hasn't been playing much chess recently because of his studies at IIIT Hyderabad. But the online tournament was a perfect event for him as he had to spend only two hours of his time. He scored 7.0/9 beating some seasoned players like Ravi Teja, Rakesh Kulkarni and others to finished fifth.

Here's his exciting game against P. Karthikeyan with an interesting finale:

There were also lucky prizes of Rs. 800 each which were to be given to places 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70. They were won by 20th - GM Deepan Chakravarthy (J2d), 30th - Arvind CJ (Junosource), 40th - IM Arghyadip Das (Casillas), 50th - Rajdeep Sarkar (duh_backbencher), 60th - Aditya Mittal (vinniethepooh) and 70th - Benjamin Vargheese Isaac (Benisaac).

There was also a parallel Fischer Fever contest that was run on Facebook and Twitter. It was a brainchild of our author Aditya Pai. These are the winners of the Fischer Fever contest:

This tournament was an initiative by ChessBase India to bring a positive development in Indian chess. We thank each and every player who participated in this event for their support. You took a leap of faith and we provided you with a good event. And we will keep doing this in the future as well. 

Of course the biggest challenge when conducting an online event is the issue of cheating. First of all we were careful to collect the FIDE IDs and names of all the players playing at the event. You can check them here. There were no anonymous entries. Secondly we had referee accounts scouting the entire playing room. All the games were carefully checked and we managed to ensure that no cheating took place by the use of engines at the event.

We also offered one month free premium subscription to every participant who paid the entry fee before the last date of the event worth Rs.125. Every name that was registered with us was updated on the tournament page by the evening each day. There was transparency in the way we conducted things and we will continue to do that. You can even download all the games of the event from the link given at the end of the article.

There were some initial glitches related to starting of the event. We were 15 minutes late, but after that everything functioned like clockwork and the tournament was over by 8.15 p.m. All those players who had technical difficulties with registration and could not play the event will be refunded the entry fees. Please write to us at chessbaseindia@gmail.com

Feedback from the participants:

Great management....First time played a tmt with no problems...This was my first online tournament.....And had a great experience hope you all organise this type of tournaments quite frequently.....Would love to participate in your future tournaments

-Ambarish Sharma

Although the tournament was organized well,I felt that that referee 1 was somehow inactive. Other than that everything was fine.

-Rahul Shrivatshav

The Fischer online blitz event on 12th March was organised in an exemplary manner. Hope we have more tournaments of this stature in future.

I must congratulate ChessBase India for promoting events like this to encourage chess players on Online. Hope all the participants were able to enjoy playing this tournament without any glitch. The opportunity provided by ChessBase India is a welcome move.

- N.V.Nagesh (father of Badri Naryanan)