Bahraich’s Qamar Naim wins CCBW +60 Chess; Bareilly’s 82-year-old Kranti Kumar Gupta oldest participant

Lucknow: Seventy-year-old Qamar Naim, of Bahraich won the CCBW +60 Seniors’ Chess Lucknow today with a blazing 6.5/7 performance. In second and third place were sixty-nine-year old Balgovind Awasthi from Kanpur and eighty-one-year old RK Gupta from Jhansi. The oldest player was eighty-two year old Kranti Kumar Gupta who came to play especially from Bareilly. He set the pace in the initial rounds.

Naim’s extremely attacking play was matched by top-seed Vimal Bhatia of Lucknow, but the latter missed out several games in time pressure.  Lakhimpur’s Krishna Murari Verma started very well but stepped back in the second half of the tournament. In the game of Lucknow stalwarts, KK Khare was winning all the way but blundered a full rook and the game to Prabhat Adhaulya.

“What an inspiring tournament,” said Chief Arbiter, Hemant Sharma. “These are the real masters of chess as unlike us they have had no access to computers. Today’s kids have an app of double the world champion’s strength on their cellphones to learn from.”

Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) hosted all senior chess players of the state in the rapid seven-round 10+5 time control event. “Play chess to stay young and fit. At sixty, free from duties, you can now travel and play. The world’s oldest Grandmaster was recently 100 years-old Yuri Averbakh of Russia. We want such inspiring seniors in India as well,” said UP champion, 2002, Dr Junaid Ahmad, director, CCBW.

Final top standings: Qamar Naim 6.5 pts, Balgovind Awasthi 6 pts, RK Gupta, KK Kulhary, KM Verma, KK Khare 5 pts, Prabhat Adhaulya 4.5 pts, Munir Ahmad, MS Siddiqui, Vimal Bhatia, Harish Kumar Srivastava, RS Kashyap, Sharda Prasad Pandey, UB Singh 4 pts, Shamim Ahmad, Kamlesh Kumar Kesharwani, Deep Saxena, RP Gupta, Phoolchand Basore, Anurag Srivastava, Ambuj Agarwal, Moolchand, KK Gupta, Vinayak Rao, S Mahana, Ajit Kumar Srivastava, Rajesh Sharma 3 pts.