Chess is one of Prof. Lakshmi Narayana's three loves. The other two are mathematics and his wife. He has completed his masters from IIT Madras in Civil Engineering in 1986 and teaching it ever since. At present he is a Professor and Head of Civil Engineering at PSCMR College of Engineering and Technology, Vijayawada. He also acts as a consultant in Geotechnical engineering on behalf of the college. He got a state (A.P.) rank (third) in mathematical Olympiad at degree level during my B.Tech. , competing with various math students. In chess, he has represented IIT Madras at the inter-university chess tournament at which Dibyendu Barua represented Jadhavpur University. Other notable participants in that tournament were Murugan, Sudhakar Babu and  Aaron brothers (Aravind and Ashok). Lakshmi Narayana used to play local (Vijayawada) tournaments and correspondence chess tournaments in 1990s. There was a long gap in playing (though he was up to date in following chess news) after that. He played his first rating tournament (below 1600) in November 2017 at New Delhi and got a rating of 1244. After that, he played in category B and C tournaments of Delhi International in Jan 2018 and improved his rating to 1383. He loves to read everything related to chess and as a player wishes to avoid silly mistakes in all the games that he plays.