6/8/2015 – It is just one state in India – but: Maharashtra is population wise far larger than any country in Europe, and: it has a thriving chess community. The state chess league is unique bidding system, definitely worthy of imitation, whereby top players are auctioned to the sponsors of the league. The inauguration is also graced by the likes of Vishy Anand and Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan.
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Third year of the Maharashtra Chess League
By Venkatachalam Saravanan
The Maharashtra Chess League (MCL), the only professional league of India, is scheduled to be held from June 11–14 at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana, Pune (Western India) for the third year in succession. As before, it is a six-team, six players per team rapid round robin tournament in the initial phase. After that comes the knockout stage between the top four, leading upto the final. MCL is a pan-Indian event, attracting some of the biggest Indian names, but with better opportunities for the players of Maharashtra state.
Vishy Anand has been roped in by the Maharashtra chess association for all their big ticket events of the past – the previous editions of MCL and the World Juniors 2014. But the organisers scored heavily in finding a partner to play chess with Vishy when they got in the Bollywood superstar and one of the best "thinking man's actors" of contemporary popular Hindi cinema, Aamir Khan!
Aamir (left in the image above) is a self-confessed chess enthusiast, to the extent of enjoying a game of chess even during film shootings. He has been spotted in odd chess events in Mumbai in the past, and is also in personal contact with Anand. Turning up for an exhibition game against the former World Champion, Aamir brought glamour to the "players auction" and launch of the event at Mumbai on 22nd May 2015.
The exhibition game between Aamir Khan and Anand was inaugurated by Aniruddha Deshpande, Chairman of the organizing committee. Watching on the left are grandmaster Abhijit Kunte and Ashok Jain, President of Maharashtra Chess Association.
Aamir has been spotted in a simultaneous display given by Indian GM Abhijit Kunte in the past. No, the image on the right is no movie shot – it was taken during the actual simultaneous game, which ended in a draw.
Aamir Khan, 50, is an actor, director, producer and television presenter. Through his successful career in Hindi films he established himself as one of the most popular and influential actors of Indian cinema. He is the recipient of four National Film Awards and seven Filmfare Awards. In 2001 he appeared in Lagaan, which received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 74th Academy Awards. In 2008, Khan appeared in the movie Ghajini, which was the highest grossing Bollywood movie of that year.
Of course, inviting Aamir Khan generated great buzz among media, the public and chess players alike, as can be gauged by the tweet from Scottish Grandmaster with an Indian connection, Jonathan Rowson. Referred in the tweet is Lagaan, the blockbuster Hindi movie, in which Aamir plays the imaginary protagonist Indian villager who challenges and defeats a team of British in a cricket match during pre-independence days.
Joining the fun himself, Anand too had a teaser tweet for Aamir, and got a warning from his former second Surya Ganguly:
In a grand setting, Anand and Aamir played out a serious game of chess, which turned out to be a surprisingly decent effort by Aamir from the white side of a game resembling an 1.e4 e5 opening structure, lasting for about 25 moves.
Yes, they were indeed this serious during the game
Having a personal contact with each other already, Aamir and Anand enthralled the press conference, coming up with memorable quips entertaining the assembled press:
Anand's young son Akhil often fiddles with the phone and calls up Aamir Khan, as the number features early in the alphabetical contacts. Aamir hurriedly picks up the phone, excited that the former world champion would be calling him!
On being asked if he would consider acting, Anand remarked, "I am a good actor when it comes to hiding my expressions from my opponent after a mistake or a blunder – so I may not give out any expression when the director of the film calls for it!
When he got engaged to Aruna, Anand stepped into her room at home and found it full of heartthrob Aamir Khan's posters.
Aruna Anand, getting to meet her favourite of youth
But of course, the quote of Aamir which went viral was that among his fellow actors, it was that the "beauty with oodles of attitude" Katrina Kaif, one of the most googled names of India, too could play chess. The info was picked up immediately on Twitter and by the tabloid press of not only India, but even from our "friendly" neighbour Pakistan! (He mentioned a few other Indian actors' names too, but they were not surprisingly left out).
Aamir Khan with Katrina Kaif
Well, we never mind publicity for chess, even of the subcontinental tabloid variety!
Ever the jovial, Aamir recalled playing an eight-year-old on the sidelines of a chess tournament at Mumbai years before and getting beaten. He played the same guy a few months later and the boy beat him again. "But you have improved from last time," , he remarked cheekily, "and are playing better chess now!"
Aamir meets the chess columnist of the newspaper Deccan Herald Manisha Mohite (who also hosted the MCL auction). He confessed to reading her columns regularly, leaving the popular chess journalist beaming.
This whole exhibition match and press conference happened after a hectic and well fought Auction, where the registered players were aggressively bid for and picked up by the six team owners along with their coaches. As in the previous edition, the six teams from various cities of Maharashtra who are participating in the league are:
Pune Attackers (Owned by Goel Ganga Group),
Jalgaon Battlers (Jain Irrigation Systems Pvt. Ltd.),
Thane Combatants (MEP Infrastructures),
Ahmednagar Checkers (RBS Sportethics),
Mumbai Movers (Shri Hari Extrusion Limited),
Pune Tru Masters (Tru Space).
The setting of the auction at Novotel, Mumbai
The bidding process, with Manisha Mohite running the auction
Prior to the auctions, the owners and the players were given the option of retaining or be retained by the previous players and owners on mutual consent, with an increase of 10% from the previous year's purse. Some of the owners and the players decided to go for the safe option, the prominent pair among them being young and strong grandmasters Vidit Gujrathi and Baskaran Adhiban, who were retained by the previous year's winner Jalgaon Battlers.
Vidit Gujrathi and Baskaran Adhiban, the "yellowmen" sticking to the winning team Jalgaon
The auction of the event was held at the Hotel Novotel Juhu Beach, Mumbai in presence of Anand, with a total 70 registered players going under the hammer, with 13 GMs, 14 IMs and 5 WGMs among them. The open auction process was hosted in a classy atmosphere, with an enhanced kitty of Rs.400,000 for each team to pick their players.
The new superstar who entered the fray for this year’s edition of MCL is, without any doubt, Koneru Humpy. And expectantly, there was a bidding war over her, with the Mumbai Movers picking her up for a record high price of Rs.152,000 (approximately 2100 Euro), while the best woman player awardee of both the previous editions, WGM Padmini Rout, was picked up by Pune Attackers for Rs.152,000. Since each team has to field a minimum of 3 players from Maharashtra in each round, titled players of the state were in high demand, as former world junior girls champion WGM Soumya Swaminathan (Rs.75,000) and WGM Eesha Karavade (Rs.112,000) were picked up for decent prices too.
Women power! (clockwise from top left) Humpy Koneru,
Padmini Rout, Soumya Swaminathan and Eesha Karavade
As the entire auction process was accompanied by live text commentary on the official website, all the WGMs picking up high tabs generated lot of interest on the cyberspace...
... and former World Junior champion GM Abhijeet Gupta came up with a cheeky quote!
Before you jump to Nigel Shortesque conclusions on women's chess, be informed that Abhijeet is a man who has dry humour and was just having fun hanging out. At the end of the auction, as the dust settled, the final composition of teams came to
Maharashtra Chess League 2015 - Teamwise Players List
Pune TruMasters
1
Abhijit Kunte
GM
Maharashtra
100,000
Auction
2
S.P. Sethuraman
GM
Tamil Nadu
99,000
Retained
3
Swati Ghate
WGM
Maharashtra
62,000
Retained
4
Maru Ann Gomes
WGM
West Bengal
48,000
Auction
5
Swayams Mishra
IM
Odisha
48,000
Auction
6
Abhishek Kelkar
Rated
Maharashtra
20,000
Auction
7
Shashikant Kutwal
Rated
Maharashtra
20,000
Auction
Jalgaon Battlers
1
Vidit Gujarathi
GM
Maharashtra
132,000
Retained
2
B. Adhiban
GM
Tamil Nadu
104,000
Retained
3
Srinath Narayanan
IM
Tamil Nadu
61,000
Auction
4
Kiran M. Mohanty
WGM
Odisha
30,000
Auction
5
Nubairshah Shaikh
Rated
Maharashtra
43,000
Auction
6
Rutuja Bakshi
Women
Maharashtra
10,000
Auction
Ahmednagar Checkers
1
Abhijeet Gupta
GM
Rajasthan
120,000
Auction
2
Rucha Pujari
Women
Maharashtra
63,000
Auction
3
M. Shyamsundar
GM
Tamil Nadu
60,000
Auction
4
SL Narayanan
IM
Kerala
50,000
Auction
5
Shardul Gagare
IM
Maharashtra
36,000
Retained
6
Aakanksha Hagawane
Women
Maharashtra
31,000
Auction
7
Pratik Patil
Rated
Maharashtra
17,000
Auction
8
Vignesh NR
Rated
Tamil Nadu
11,000
Retained
Thane Combatants
1
Eesha Karavade
WGM
Maharashtra
114,000
Auction
2
Aravindh Chitambaram
GM
Tamil Nadu
75,000
Auction
3
Lalith Babu MR
GM
Andhra Pradesh
75,000
Auction
4
Soumya Swaminathan
WGM
Maharashtra
75,000
Auction
5
Ratnakaran K.
IM
Kerala
30,000
Auction
6
Abhimanyu Puranik
Rated
Maharashtra
12,000
Retained
7
Chinmay Kulkarni
Rated
Maharashtra
10,000
Auction
Mumbai Movers
1
Koneru Humpy
GM
Andhra Pradesh
152,000
Auction
2
Vaibhav Suri
GM
New Delhi
60,000
Auction
3
Diptayan Ghosh
IM
West Bengal
51,000
Auction
4
Vikramaditya Kulkarni
IM
Maharashtra
30,000
Auction
5
Rakesh Kulkarni
Rated
Maharashtra
12,000
Retained
6
Shalmali Gagare
Women
Maharashtra
10,000
Auction
Pune Attackers
1
Padmini Rout
IM
Odisha
150,000
Auction
2
Venkatesh MR
GM
Tamil Nadu
90,000
Auction
3
Swapnil Dhopade
IM
Maharashtra
79,000
Retained
4
Thejkumar M.S.
IM
Karnataka
33,000
Retained
5
Parnali Dharia
Women
Maharashtra
31,000
Auction
6
Aniruddha Deshpande
Rated
Maharashtra
10,000
Auction
To recap some of the important regulations of the event: every team must field at least three players from Mahrashtra in each round, and including two women players is compulsory. There are no general board orders for teams during the event! This means that, players with equal strengths will rarely play each other in every round.
IM Venkatachalam Saravanan is not only strong chess player but also an excellent writer as well as a photographer. When not in action on the chessboard, you can spot him with non-chess book. A voracious reader, he has a great vocabulary. ChessBase thanks him for bringing us some wonderful background reports on chess in India.
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