International Master Vikramaditya Kulkarni has been given the top seeding in the SBI Life All-Maharashtra FIDE Rating Chess Tournament, which gets underway at the Don Bosco High School prenises, Borivali from Wednesday, November 18, 2015.
National ‘B’ champions and Western Railway player, Kulkarni who has a high rating of ELO 2303 points, leads the field ahead of nearest rival and teammate, Amardeep Bartakke (ELO 2126) by nearly 175 ELO points. The other notable players in the fray are Ketan Boricha (ELO 2060), Rajababu Gajengi (ELO 1863) and former national ‘A’ player, V.N. Ghate (1780).
Challenging the top ranked player will come from a young brigade of chess talents led by 9-year old, Candidate Master Raahil Mullick – the Gold Medalist of Asian School Chess Championship of 2014, Ankur Gokhale, Muketesh Raghavan, Chakshu Dhannawat, Ridit Nimdia, Shardul Wakade, Jeet Shah and Ruhaan Mahindru, Alaina Vincent and Sanskruti Mahajan. The event also features a good number of unrated players who would by looking forward to earn their FIDE ratings.
The players would be vying for the first prize of Rs.25,000 from a total prize pool of Rs.1.50 Lakhs.
The tournament, sponsored by SBI Life Insurance, has attracted more than 225 players across Maharashtra, which includes 115 FIDE Rated players. The games would be played as per FIDE Laws of Chess in a classical format of 10-round Swiss League over a period of 5 days from November 18-22, 2015. A total of two time controls would be used wherein the players would be required to complete 40-moves in 90-minutes followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game. An added time of 30 seconds would be available to the players for each of the
completed move.
The tournament is being organized by Indian Chess School under the aegis of Mumbai Suburban District Chess Association, Maharashtra Chess Association and the All India Chess Federation. The performance of the players would be taken into account by FIDE (World Chess Federation) to determine their ratings.
The Chief Arbiter for this event is International Arbiter Vitthal Madhav and he would be assisted by IA Prem Pandit and FA Vishwanath Madhav while the Tournament Director is FI Praful Zaveri.