India dominates the Commonwealth

I have just returned from the Commonwealth Chess Championships 2014 in Glasgow, Scotland where we were all reminded why India are one of the strongest chess countries in the world. Very often, on the top “stage” boards, it was just those from the Indian delegation. They left the rest of us to shame, whilst all we could do was desperately try to catch up.

The event was held at Glasgow City College, inside a sports hall, which doesn’t sound particularly glamorous but it was kitted out perfectly well, providing live boards on the top 40 boards which were being streamed live at www.chessscotland.com. We were even entertained during round 6 when there was a live marching band performing through the streets. The music was so loud, it was as if they were marching through our tournament hall! Whilst being provided with authentic Scottish music for our visitors, this was too much for some and many had to put their games on pause until the music passed!

Graduation at Strathclyde University

Most competitors were staying at Strathclyde University accommodation, which was basic but had everything we needed and it was nice to have everyone in the same place. There were several graduations going on throughout the first half of the tournament in the courtyards. I had fun trying to blend in and “obtain” some free beverages! That was not the only entertainment at the university, as on the day of round 9, one of the flats was evacuated due to a fire alert! There were several fire engines and firemen called to attend this “emergency” and we were unable to get back into our rooms for a good 25 mins. It turned out it was a false alarm and someone had just burnt their breakfast (it might have been me – oops!). The bright side: we got to see some firemen!

Adam Taylor - one of England's top u16 players

Sixteen federations turned up for this year’s commonwealth championships with the home country dominating the entries and India following closely behind. There was a very disappointingly low number of entries from England considering we are just next door. Strange, as it would have been the perfect warm-up for the British Chess Championships, which is starting next week.

James Evans, top Welsh junior, with his Welsh Dragon mascot!

The tournament saw 9 GMs, 10 IMs, 3 WGMs, 7 FMs, 4 WIMs and 5 WFMs! So there were plenty of norm chances up for grabs!

In addition to the main event, they held the Commonwealth Junior Championships alongside, where they awarded prizes in 12 junior categories – U10-U20 boys and girls. The numbers for the junior events were rather low, which is surprising, but a number of the stronger juniors were in the open section.

Ali Roy - Scotland Ladies' Olympiad team memberand second u20 female

The diversity of the tournament was shown when the organisers even ran a disabled championships alongside the main event, consisting of those players who were less able than others.

With 152 competitors in the event and no accelerated pairings, you were bound to get some pairings with huge rating differences and therefore some upsets. There seemed to be several extremely underrated players in the tournament costing many people a lot of rating points! There were a large number of juniors in the open event who were playing in both the junior and open championships, racking up a total of about 8 hours of chess a day! I really don’t know how they survived 9 days in a row of that!

Monica Espinosa Cancino - a leading Scottish female junior

GM Abhijeet Gupta looked to be the favourite in the tournament, being about 100 points higher rated than the rest of the field. He has always done rather well in tournaments in the UK, being a past winner of London Chess Classic too. He especially looked unstoppable after six rounds when he was on a perfect score, already taking 2 GMs and 2 IMs and a point clear of everyone. He halved out

Jonathan Pein - son of IM Malcolm Pein, organizer of the London Classic. Jonathan won over 30 rating points!

Stephen Whatley - Gibraltar's representative and winner of a rating prize category

in rounds 7 and 8 against GMs Das and Sengupta but was still half a point clear going into the last round.

What was almost a perfect tournament for Abhijeet was absolutely destroyed by junior IM Chithambaram (only 15 years old), who had already won the U16 championships that morning with a whopping 9/9! Despite IM Chithambaram having the black pieces and being substantially outrated, he was not fazed in the slightest and went on for a stunning victory, depriving Abhijeet of the title and gaining the top highest score himself.

Abhijeet Gupta - top seed

Meanwhile, on the next board, GMs Sengupta and Grover were battling it out for what they probably didn’t quite realise at the time, was the Commonwealth title! Their game was so interesting that there was a big crowd of people surrounding it for most of the game. I actually spent more of my game time watching their board, rather than mine! GM Sengupta came out victorious and on tie-break, became the new Commonwealth Champion 2014!

The gorgeous Tania Sachdev - also a model for Red Bull (you can see she is faithful!)

The playing hall was adequate

Now, his tournament could have gone so differently, for in round 2 he was up against…me! Having been so rusty and really out of form lately, I was not expecting to hold my own for very long. However, I suddenly found I was just better for most of the game and had several winning chances of which I was just not confident enough to go for. Such a shame, but it was a fun game and being the great guy that he is, Deep gave me some serious respect in the post-mortem, which is flattering coming from the new Commonwealth Champion

GM Debasihi Das

FM Justin Tan is one of Austalia's leading players, but now attends school in England

WFM Elaine Bamber - Scotland Ladies' board 2

I finished the tournament on 6/9, which was a decent result, with losses only to GM Sengupta and GM Ankit, but this still wasn’t a good enough effort to be in with the shot of the Commonwealth Ladies’ title, which went to WGM Bhakti Khulkani on 6.5 points. Second place, also scoring 6.5 points was WGM Soumya Swaminathan and 3rd place, to whom I missed out on the trophy by tie break was IM Tania Sachdev, also scoring 6 points.

Yours truly sporting the "good luck" hat of Jaimie Kenmure, Australia's arbititing delegate

Incorporated in this tournament was also the Scottish Chess Championships and so there were several Scottish players fighting for this title. This year’s Champion was FM Alan Tate, who turned his final round game around against English junior Peter Batchelor to somehow win a very complicated position in which he looked to be losing. Senior Scottish Champion was IM Mark Orr and the Scottish Player of the Year was voted for and won by IM Roddy McKay. The full list of prizewinners can be found here and the final standings can be found here.

This was my first Commonwealth Chess Championships and was a very pleasant one; the event was well run and all the competitors were really friendly. Looking forward to next year!

227: GM Rajpara Ankit – U20 3rd place

The crowd around the game between GM Sengupt-GM Grover. I wonder how many people lost several minutes off their clock!

WFM V Vashini – U16 Commonwealth Girls’ Champion & U18 3rd place Girls.

WFM R Vaishali – U14 Commonwealth Champion (8/9) & U18 Commonwealth Girls’ Champion (6/9)

Akash PC Iyer – U18 Commonwealth Boys’ Champion

IM Roddy McKay - Scottish player of the year

IM Alan Tate - Scottish Champion 2014

293: WGM Bhakti Khulkani – Commonwealth Ladies’ Champion 2014

Commonwealth Chess Champion 2014: GM Deep Sengupta