India Retains World Youth Olympiad Title

India Retains World Youth Olympiad Title
By Arvind Aaron

India retained the World Youth Chess Olympiad title by racing ahead of Iran and Russia at the end of the tenth round at Gyor in Hungary on December 21, 2014. Significantly, India is winning this title for the fourth time.

In the final round, India faced an unexpected setback on board one when Diptayan Ghosh lost his only game of the event but the trio on the others boards won to help India defeat Turkey 3-1. India won nine matches and lost one to Russia to total 18 match points.

Iran went down narrowly to hosts Hungary-1 by 1.5-2.5 to be relegated to the third place with 16 points. Russia won big time 3.5-0.5 against Ukraine to take the silver medal with 17 points.

A total of 37 nations took part in this ten round Swiss format event on four boards.

Indian scorers: Diptayan Ghosh 5.5/9; Karthikeyan Murali 8/10; Aravindh Chithambaram 8/9; B Kumaran 4.5/9; G.K. Monnisha 0.5/3. Aravindh was India’s best player gaining 19.4 Elo while Karthikeyan Murali made 10.1 Elo and also became a Grand Master mid-way through this event.

Experienced coach, Grand Master R.B. Ramesh was the coach of the Indian team. He runs his own chess academy, Chess Gurukul in Chennai. He trains most of these young players personally as well.

India’s advancement can be seen in the context that our main Olympiad team played from 1956 to 2014 and won a bronze medal this year in 2014. Our Youth are faring better and have won the titles in 2007, 2008, 2013 and now 2014. Our youngsters are building strongly from what our senior players have achieved.

Final placings (match points): 1 India (gold) 18/20; 2 Russia (silver) 17; 3 Iran (bronze) 16; 4 Hungary-1 14; 5-10. Canada, Georgia, Belarus, Romania, Israel, Moldova 13 each; 11-15. Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, Mongolia, Serbia 12 each…54 teams.