Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi beat David Anton Guijarro of Spain in the ninth & deciding round of the 28th Abu Dhabi Masters Chess Tournament in August 2022. Second and third place went to Javokhir Sindarov & Jorden van Foreest, who each scored 7 out of a possible 9 points. Indians took six of the ten leading spots.
Chess is a sport that calls for immense focus, perseverance and commitment to make it to the top. While you wish for your child to excel in the game and make a name for herself/himself in the world of chess, there’s also the perennial parental concern:
As curtains drew on the FIDE World Chess Championship 2021, with the reigning champion Magnus Carlsen fixing the crown stronger on his head, challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi had much to regret. It was a blunder - that slipped the game that was closing for a draw - from his hands and handed over the match to Carlsen.
These kids are young and they are the best at what they do. Being a chess master is a dream for every kid who adores chess. But these kids have made a place in the world named as the Youngest Grandmasters. You know your game well, but do you know them? Let us take some inspiration from these little geniuses.
Can our brains be re-wired? Could we reboot the matrix of our mind and upgrade it to perform better? Psychiatric researches intended to study the neuroplasticity of the brain - "the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience," (Sharon Begley, TIME, 2007) - reveal that consistent mental practices help in reorganizing our brain patterns. And that is good news! What if our emotional responses could be controlled, behavioural patterns altered, and the entire thought process re-worked to make us better, smarter and productive individuals? Can our kids get less wimpy, grumpy, cranky and lazy with a few brain-tricks? Provokingly enticing!
For some people, chess is one such board game that leads them to anxiety and panic attacks. It would be wrong to deny the fact that, for some people chess is stressful. It is because a person can relate to real-life situations while playing chess. Though they know it is a game, it seems to be a real life representation of various strenuous scenarios they have come across.
Actually, it is the other way around, chess has numerous benefits, it helps you make better decisions, strategise, increase IQ, improve memory, enhance problem solving skills and it also comes with being patient.
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing" The American Superhero, Benjamin Franklin was a prominent figure of the early American history. What's incredible about his personality, he wasn't restricted to any particular profession. He played contrasting roles in different phases of his life, he was a leading author, civic activist, political theorist, diplomat and even a postmaster. He believed in an uninterrupted flow of life, just like a river.
With the world becoming more competitive every passing day, school education alone is not enough to prepare the children for tomorrow. Schools do impart knowledge, but they don’t run programs to take care of students who face learning and focus issues. Moreover, school programs are not designed to enhance the children’s soft skills and development of survival skills. The need to thoroughly prepare children for the life’s survival race has given rise to many afterschool programs. Though a lot of parents enroll their kids in multiple afterschool programs to restrict them from wasting their after-school time in unproductive activities, they are not aware of the many benefits that an afterschool program delivers.
March 9, 1943 marked the birth of an incredible young talent. Bobby Fischer became the first American-born world chess champion after defeating his arch rival Boris Spassky. He was also the world’s youngest international grandmaster at the age of fifteen. Bobby was only a six-year-old, when he learnt how to play chess along with his sister by reading the instructions found in a chess set. His sister Joan had picked up the chess board from a candy store below their apartment.
For a viewer, it’s all about moving one piece of chess coin from one position to another. But only the chess player who has made the move knows what has happened inside his or her mind. Within the few seconds of looking at the board, the chess player would have played a hundred moves, cracked 50 strategies, made 10 sacrifices, read the opponent’s mind, come up with counter strikes and zeroed in that one move he went on to play. Sometimes, all we can do is look at a chess player and get inspired by their thought processes and approach to life and chess in general.
‘Beginner’s Chess & the Challenges’, is an article that focuses on the kids who begin their play of chess and intended to enlighten their parents who may or may not have knowledge & experience in the game. Unlike, other board games, chess has its uniqueness not only in its play but also in the benefits that are ensuing from it. The day when a kid learns to play chess, is a beginning of a long journey of development into a professional chess player. Many Grand Masters that I have interacted and observed had started to learn chess at the age of 5 or 6. But, they have become grand masters in their early teen age or towards the fag end of their teen age. Hence, it is a long journey for your kid to conquer the title, “Grand Master”
There are prodigies and there are some people who are beyond such concepts. Such veterans cannot be confined within the limits of anything and when you see them, you look up to them with amazement than appreciating them. In a land of over a billion people, there are only a handful who would fall into this category and one such legend is our very own Grandmaster from Chennai Mr. Vishwanathan Anand.
The team at Mind Mentorz is very proud of our student - Lakshanya for securing the 1st prize in her recent Chess Tournament. Lakshanya played in the Under 10 Category of the Rainbow Club Chess Tournament, held in Bangalore on Jan 21st, 2018 and secured 1st Prize in Girls category. She concluded the tournament with a score of 4/6 pts.
They say practice and perseverance make a person perfect. True that is and if you are venturing out to develop a new skill, you need more than these two attributes to consistently get better at what you intend to do. Precisely, you need the right exposure, mentorship and information about your interest to stay updated about it, learn trivia, interesting things only people within the circle of your interest would know, tips and tricks and what not! This specifically holds true for a game like chess, which cannot be confined to a book.
There were a total of 62 Participants in the 15th BNCF Chess Tournament that took place in BEL Officers Club, Bangalore. After a total of 7 Rounds, Manasvi managed to secure the 1st place in her category (U10) after she successfully managed to secure a 5.5/7 Rounds. The team at Mind Mentorz would like to congratulate Manasvi on a remarkable performance and wish her the best for her future chess tournaments.
As chess players, we all yearn for that perfect moment we can trap our opponents, strangle them with pieces and watch them slowly give up to their helplessness. Ah, what a sight! However, reaching up to that point is not easy and sometimes, we tend to make a few minor miscalculations or give into carelessness that backfires our strategies for a perfect checkmate.
Over the last few decades, mankind has been fortunate to witness some really intense moments that have earned a permanent name for themselves in history. There have been some great moments in the history of chess, where one masterstroke have turned players into legends and tournaments into historic milestones. Be it the games involving Anderssen and Dufresene, Kasparov, Vishwanathan Anand or Deep Blue, there are some greatest games in chess that looked back in awe in the decades to come.
Like any other game, you can become better at chess by constant practicing. This is an evolutionary game, where you not just learn newer ways of winning a game but evolve after every match as well. If winning in chess teaches you about your opponent’s mistake, losing can teach you yours. With literally several thousands of probabilities to the game, you cannot just come up with a pattern and device algorithms to tackle chess and win using a textbook approach. It takes constant development of skills including strategizing, consequential analysis, manipulation, grabbing the right opportunity at the right time and foreseeing actions to get better at chess.
So, you’ve played or opening game really well. You had strategies in place and worked on implementing them. You had even managed manipulate your opponent into tricking a few moves to your advantage and took a significant leave. But then, things seemed like getting rattled. With just a few pieces left for both of you, somewhere you feel you can’t win because you are not sure how to tactically move your remaining pieces towards victory and the opponent is starting to gain an upper hand.
