Lucknow lads Pawan, Ayush ace chess contest in city

Lucknow: Senior Lucknow player Pawan Batham, and 14-year-old Ayush Saxena from Shahjahanpur, won the “Protect your Queen” chess tournament held at a city hotel. Both scored 5.5/6 points and all credit to Ayush for drawing with top seed Pawan. Aiman Akhtar was Best Woman with 4.5 points followed by Pooja Kashyap and Vineeta Agarwal.

Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) organised the tournament as part of a campaign launched by 13-year-old Prisha Garg of Kunskapsskolan School. Prisha says, “Chess is a sport where boys and girls can compete at the same level but, sometimes, boys tease and harass when they lose to a girl.”

She added, “Not just in chess, in society as a whole, my campaign is not about punishing errant boys but about creating awareness in society. Chess is a great way to say girls are capable as well.” India Women’s Chess No. 2, Dronavalli too has reported being harassed at the international level.

Special prizes at the event included: Best Chess Dad 1st and 2nd Kuldeep Kumar and Kanishka Deva Rastogi. Best Chess Mom was Shweta Bharti. Best chess-theme-royalty dress prize went to Arun Singh who wore a dazzling turban to the tournament.

Chief guest Garima Gupta, educationist and Young Indian Scientist, awarded by late president Abdul Kalam, gave away the prizes.

Final Standings

1st-2nd : Pawan Batham, Ayush Saxena 5.5  pts (on tiebreak), 3rd : Arun Singh 5, 4th : Sameer Mukherjee 4.5 pts, 5th-8th :  Krishna Tejas T, Nikhar Saxena, Harshit Arora, Abhishek Srivastava 4 pts,  9th :  Sudhir Verma 3.5 pts 10th-12th :  Aniket Mohan, Parth Bhalla, Vinay.

Best Veteran :  1st Ajit Kumar Srivastava 4 pts, 2nd UB Singh 3.5 pts

U15 : 1st Arnav Tripathi 4 pts, 2nd Prisha Garg 2 pts
U13 :  1st Atharv Thapliyal 4 pts, 2nd Arjun Garg 3.5 pts
U9 :  1st Aja Thapliyal 2.5 pts, 2nd Yuvaan Grover 2 pts.