It was a great New year start for Chess in Pondicherry.  Three club tournaments were organized this January at Factum Chess Academy. One for talented players of Pondicherry, and two open tournaments. The first open tournament was a good simple start with a little more than 30 players participating, and the second was a pretty crowded one, with almost 60 participants.  From organizing Chess tournaments,  learning about the intricacies of group teaching, to playing around with naughty four-five year olds, the first month of our Anna Nagar Chess centre was full of learning. Here are some of our memories, and lessons.

The very first day we started with a parents meeting to kick off the Chess center’s continuous series of activities. Our student strength gradually grew to 42 near the end of January.

It was also the first time we organized (and played) in a Round-Robin event, where we get to play all the players in the event. Prasannaa from Chennai accepted our invitation despite his busy schedule, and also won it. He did manage to play the Chennai International Open on time, which was a day after our event. The purpose the event served was to give talented players from Pondicherry a window of experience to professional Chess, by letting them play in a strong, invitation-based Round robin event.

Rapid Open tournaments are fun to play, but pretty stressful to organize. We are grateful for the parents, especially, without whose support this might have been a chaos. Parents were happy to sit on the floor to adjust for the lack of chairs, and some of them help organize the event, especially during the last hour of the event when it gets super stressful.

The future of Chess in this part of the world? Who else but kids.

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We noticed many enthusiastic kids enjoying the game of Chess. These are just some of the photos. Every kid in unique. By organizing these events, and facilitating chess education in Pondicherry, we envision Factum Chess Academy as one of the key players in improving the Chess ecosystem in Pondicherry. But it’s not a one man show, but a team work, since a chess ecosystem consists not just tournament organizers and coaches, but other strong players to get inspiration from, parents to support the journey, sponsors for these kids to grow in their chess carrier, federation officials to facilitate this growth and also journalists to get the news out.  So far it’s been a good start for Factum Chess Academy, and we believe that together we can make a difference in Pondicherry. It’s time for Masters and GrandMasters to evolve from this land.

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