Sahaj won the National Junior Championship

Sahaj Grover

India’s newest Grandmaster Sahaj Grover of Delhi won the National Junior Chess Championship defeating overnight sole leader Debashish Das of Orissa in the 11th and final round that concluded at Ajmer.

Grover, who turned 17 during the course of the championship, delivered when it mattered the most as Das was no match for the wily ways of his younger opponent. This victory for Grover comes soon after the completion of his Grandmaster title at the World Junior chess championship at Athens in Greece.

For the records, Grover scored 8.5 points in all and ended up half a point ahead of nearest rivals N Srinath, Vidit Gujarathi, Debashish Das, Anurag Mahamal, Dipptayan Ghosh and G A Stany who all scored eight points in all.

Grover lost one game, won seven and drew the remaining three. The loss against International Master Aditya Udeshi was heartbreaking in the fourth round but the Delhi-boy staged a remarkable comeback upstaging Das in the last round.

It was the game of the tournament wherein Grover launched an offence very early from a queen pawn opening as white and ripped apart the centre with a brilliant knight sacrifice. Das was at sea trying to figure out an escape route but there was none as the postmortem of the game confirmed. Grover paralysed black’s forces in no time and forced Das to resign.

“This has been a decent result after I was going haywire midway through the tournament, even before the last round I was not sure if I would win the championship despite winning the last round, it was possible only thanks to some positive results for me on other boards”, said Grover matter-of-factly after winning the title.

The student of Kulachi Hansraj Model School singled out his game against Das as his best effort, “The way I had been playing before the last round I was not convinced with myself, but then I had analysed this line for some time and when Debashish (Das) went for it, I knew it would be at least a keen tussle. And then it just went my way”, Grover noted.

A former under-10 world champion, Grover is also a bronze medalist in the 2011 world junior championship.

India Ahead Of Russia!

Activity of any chess country is measured by the total of rated and unrated players in the FIDE rating file. In the March 2012 list, India has 23,636 players which is ahead of Russia's 21470. Clearly, more Indians play chess and our nation is more fertile ground for growth of the game. Credit should go to the All India Chess Federation and its successful policies.

However, three other nations ahead of us are in West Europe: France 30756, Spain 27537, Germany 24124. Indian growth story is steeper and we are likely to overtake the big three if we maintain our present growth. FIDE released the March 2012 list and here are the top numbers:

Now there are 19 Indians rated above the 2500 rating mark and here is that prestigious list: V. Anand 2799, K. Sasikiran 2703, P. Harikrishna 2678, Abhijeet Gupta 2643, P. Negi 2639, S.S. Ganguly 2633, Sandipan Chanda 2595, G.N. Gopal 2572, Deep Sengupta 2572, B. Adhiban 2561, P. Magesh Chandran 2557, Abhijit Kunte 2547, S.P. Sethuraman 2546, M.R. Lalith Babu 2532, Vidit Gujrathi 2528, Sahaj Grover 2517, S. Arun Prasad 2517, Tejas Bakre 2513, M.R. Venkatesh 2509.

Humpy naturally leads the Indian women's list but the difference between her and Harika is only 88 Elo. Koneru Humpy 2589, D. Harika 2501, Tania Sachdev 2414, S. Vijayalakshmi 2376, Mary Ann Gomes 2369, Eesha Karavade 2353, Soumya Swaminathan 2345, Padmini Rout 2345, Nisha Mohota 2312, S. Meenakshi 2298.

In the list of nations which is compiled by the average of the top ten players, Russia is on top with 2748 followed by: Ukraine 2693, 3 France 2661, 4 Hungary 2657, 5 Armenia 2657, 6 China 2657, 7 India 2645, 8 Azerbaijan 2644, 9 USA 2643, 10 Israel 2643.

Source: http://www.indianchessfed.org/