Bangalore chess club - Chess in Bangalore
In this article, we will dive into the life of Tarun Mittal, the current lead at the Bangalore Chess Club and a perfect example of how perseverance, hard work, and a little bit of luck can take you places. Tarun was not afraid to ask or take chances, and that has helped the Bangalore Chess Club become one of the most successful chess clubs in India. Chess.com sponsors their prizes, and many reputed chess players came to his club. Want to know how it all panned out? Read ahead.
Early days and life
My father taught me chess when I was very young.
In fact, the wooden chess pieces, which I still have, were bought by him before
I was born, and he even made the chess board himself. He taught me the basics,
and soon I started defeating him. After that, he stopped playing with me, as
all fathers do, and I started playing a little bit in school. I even
participated in a few interschool competitions but never got any formal
training. I did participate in the annual sports competition at school, and in
that, I got a silver medal. The best thing about chess is that if you are a
little curious and you love to solve puzzles, chess will definitely captivate
your interest. Although I was never too serious about it, chess never left me,
as I just loved to solve positions and win.
Life moved on, as usual, I finished my schooling
and got enrolled in NIT Surathkal, where I did my graduation in electronics and
communication. I did participate in various intra-college chess championships.
Although I was pretty strong, I could not get selected for the chess team of
our college as they already had many strong players with them, one of them
being FM Sharan Rao, who now has many registered wins against grandmasters.
Nevertheless, that did not stop me from playing chess; I played a lot of chess
in my final year and participated in my first FIDE-rated tournament after my
graduation. I admit that it was quite late for a chess player, but I did not
care. It was the first classical game I ever played, scoring 5.5/10. I was the
first runner-up in the unrated category, and that felt good.
Bangalore Chess Club
Bangalore Chess Club was first founded by Manish
Simon in 2015 out of boredom.
After the chess boom in 2019, people in the
group became more interested, and more and more people wanted to play the
sport. I started streaming chess around the same time and also did some
collaborations with the Bangalore chess club. One of them was conducting a hand
and brain chess tournament which I like to believe was the first ever hand and
brain conducted online. That was the first time I got to know a lot of new
people, outside of my friend circle. These were the people whom I never met but
just bonded with, over our similar love for chess. This was how I started
getting to know people and they got to know me. After a few months, streaming
stopped because it took a lot of my time and energy, but I was always active in
the group.
Moving forward to September 2021, I was in
Bangalore for a few months and did not have much to do. So, I asked Manish if I
can host a tournament as he was busy. He agreed and told me to go ahead with
it, so I just created a post on Bangalore chess club’s Instagram and WhatsApp
group that we were conducting a meet-up in Cubbon Park, and at that time 30
people showed up. That was my first time in the Bangalore chess club and I was
the one hosting it, definitely, it was an unforgettable experience.
After that, I did one or two more meetups, and then I had to move back to Mumbai. What surprised me was that this time there were many new people in the group who started playing chess during the pandemic. People even volunteered to keep on conducting the meetup while I was away. I coordinated everything, and they executed it perfectly. Offices opened, and I was back in Bangalore for good.
In March 2022, both ChessBase India and
Chess.com covered our club, and at that time the average attendance was around
30 to 40, which rose to 70 to 80 afterward. Chess.com started sponsoring our
prizes, which was the first of its kind, and we have never looked back.
As the number grew, the requirements of chess
boards grew with it. To manage that, I reached out to a few chessboard
companies, but that was of no help. Luckily, I reached out to the founder of Stonkraft,
Sachin Gupta, and asked him if they could sponsor our chessboards. They kindly
obliged and had been sponsoring our chess sets ever since.
Recently, we also had the U-8 world champion Charvi
Anilkumar come and play with the members of our chess club.
The future of Bangalore Chess Club
I think the best-case scenario would be something
like the St. Louis Chess Club or organizing a grand tournament and having many
chess grandmasters participate, but that is on the ambitious side.
Also, recently, there have been a lot of
requests from people from different sides of the city to host a meetup closer
to them. So, I am planning to expand and find some volunteers who can conduct
events in various parts of the city.
Interview with Tarun Mittal, leader of Bangalore Chess Club
Sneha Tiwari (ST): How did you get in touch with Manish for the
first meet-up?
Tarun Mittal (TM): The Bangalore Chess Club has always been a community, and it will always be a community. So, even though Manish started it, the ambiance was never like that. It was just a group for discussions and friendly games, which I joined, but since he started it, I thought it would be better if I asked him if I could conduct it. So, it was just that, I took a calculated risk and everything worked out well.
ST: How did you manage to get chess.com as your
prize sponsor?
TM: Again, it was just that I took a risk and asked. I reached out to them and asked if it would be possible for them to sponsor our prizes, and they said it could be done. Since then, we have been randomly giving people in our chess club a chess.com t-shirt and two diamond memberships. IM Rakesh Kulkarni from Chess.com India has been very supportive.
ST: How do you choose the winners of the prize?
Do the top seeds get it, or is it random?
TM: The prize distribution is done randomly,
through a lucky draw. Basically, we just want people to have fun. It is not
like we are conducting a rating tournament or a serious one. We just want to
build a community where you can come play anytime you want, try different
openings with random people, and have fun.
ST: Managing such a big club comes with its
problems. What would you say is the biggest challenge you have faced regarding
the club?
TM: After the chess.com post, our average has always been around 70–80 people, and it was free and walk-in for everyone. We planned to hold the event in Cubbon Park, and anyone who wanted to participate was welcomed. Our playing chess in the park caught the attention of people, and many of them joined us, but that very day a problem happened; the police came and told us that we cannot host such a big gathering in a public space without permission. After that, we went to the authorities, and put forward our proposition, but never got permission, so that was the last meetup we did in Cubbon Park. After that, we have been hosting the events in a closed-booking place called Lahe-Lahe in Indiranagar.
The idea of a paid venue was alien to me. I
never thought that we would have to charge people for entry, but I failed to
get a free venue even after one month of searching. After trying everything, in
the end, we had to rent out a place, and for that, we started charging people
50 rupees for entry, but even that was too little for the founders of the
place, and they told me to raise the price.
ST: What is your FIDE rating right now, and do
you have any plans for your professional chess career in the future?
TM: Right now, my FIDE rating is only 1236, but
I am quite proud of my lichess rating, which is around 2100. As for my plans
for my professional chess career, I don’t think I have one, as it is too late
for me now. I have reached a point in the game where I need professional
training to improve. If I say that I am learning by watching YouTube videos,
that would be a lie. They might help a little, but I think that at my level, in
order to improve more, I need more discipline and training, which I cannot
afford right now due to my job and other commitments.
Having said all that, I would say I do want to play games for experience, something like Sunway Sitges. I do have a dream of getting at least a CM title, which you get after a 2000 rating, but it looks very hard right now, and also, I am enjoying this other side of being a chess player, which is conducting tours and meeting new people. So, I think I'd be happy in that role, but I'd definitely like to try new things; for example, I was in the curtain raiser at the Olympiad, which was an interesting experience.
ST: What has been the proudest moment for you
till now?
TM: I would say my proudest moment was when we conducted our biggest event, and called Karnataka’s first GM, Thej Kumar. He conducted a public simul in Garuda Mall. I took all the initiative of contacting him, taking his dates, contacting chess.com for monetary sponsorship, getting the venue, printing merchandise, making sure the event went smoothly, etc., and I want that to just be the beginning and want us to do more.
ST: What do you think the chess culture of
Bangalore is like? And how much do you think the chess boom has affected it?
TM: I believe Bangalore has a strong chess culture. It is up and coming; we have grandmasters and many chess academies also, but I think more people got interested in the sport after the pandemic; I could clearly see the difference in my immediate circle. More of my friends came to me and said, "Please teach us some chess." Also, there were so many people who played chess but stopped and started playing again during the lockdown, after the chess boom.
ST: What would you say is your drive for doing
all of this?
TM: I think I am just enjoying it a lot. I
always had this drive to start something new. In college, I was the first to
organize a 24-hour hackathon for the electronics department. I was also a part
of a start-up similar to Yulu's. It did not do well, but I learned so much from
all that. Similarly, in chess, I wanted to try something new. I was itching to
do something, the opportunity came knocking on my door, and I just opened it.
ST: What do you think is the best part about all
of this?
TM: Meeting new people; I got to interact with
so many people who have taught me different things in my life. I also got to
meet Biswa and play a game with him, which would not have been possible
otherwise. I got to interact with IM Sagar, Shah, Ashwin Subramanian, and so many other driven
people, and I got to pick up so many of their good qualities.
ST: How do you manage your time given that you
have a full-time job and a chess club to run to?
TM: So, I am an engineer at Samsung, which is a
Korean company. Although they work very hard, their culture is not such that it
consumes too much of my time and energy. Therefore, I am able to manage both
pretty well right now.
ST: Anything else you would like to add?
TM: I would definitely like to mention a few
people who have helped me, the Bangalore Chess Club, and chess in general to
grow.
Manish Simon
Arunava Bhattacharjee
Ashwin Subramanian
The team at BCC in general (which may keep
rotating)
Important links
Bangalore chess club Instagram handle
For all the other information regarding Bangalore chess club, click here
About the Author - Sneha Tiwari
From the city of nawabs and a graduate in mechanical engineering, I think “jack of all trades” is what would describe me the best. Interested in a lot of fields such as photography, chess, writing, reading, philosophy, psychology, gardening, and many others, I am someone who believes that constant learning is the way to grow. Having loved chess all my life, I have recently started studying it and want to play at least one professional tournament in my life. Chess and photography are my two loves and I would like to combine them and convert them into a profession someday.