Metro Railway wins All India Inter Railway 2019

by Shahid Ahmed - 27/10/2019

Indian chess witnesses two secret tournaments - Inter Petroleum and Inter Railway tournament. Why are they secret tournaments? Because both tournaments generally happen off the radar, only the players who participate in this tournament are aware of it and rest of the world are oblivious of its happenings. Since these are not rating tournaments, players can play tension-free, experiment as much as they want, but one thing they fight for is - bragging rights. Metro Railway has never fielded more than two members in their team, however for the first time ever, they had all four members and they won it. Here is a pictorial report of the tournament. Photo: Joydeep Dutta

Metro Railway makes a full fledged 'debut'

GM Saptarshi RoyChowdhury and IM Somak Palit have been representing Metro Railway team in the All India Inter Railway tournament for a long time. However they lacked their third and fourth member which made it virtually impossible for the team to ever win a match, let alone win the tournament. However, that changed after IM Sayantan Das and FM Joydeep Dutta made their debuts for Metro Railway.

Metro Railway receives their champion's trophy | Photo: Joydeep Dutta

Team Metro Railway scored an unbeaten 10.0/12

I asked the captain of the team after their monumental victory, GM Saptarshi RoyChowdhury about how he felt his team winning the tournament for the first time and this is what he had to say, "Well it's a fantastic feeling. This is the first time we were playing with four recruited players. The team members played really well."

Defending champions Integral Coach Factory went down against South Western Railway 1.5-2.5 | Photo: Joydeep Dutta

Eastern Railway lost to Southern Railway 1.5-2.5 | Photo: Joydeep Dutta

Team South Central Railway (L to R) - Vikramjit S Singh, IM Mehar Chinna Reddy C H, Arjun Tiwari and IM P D S Girinath | Photo: Joydeep Dutta

A player donned a ChessBase India t-shirt at Inter-Railways match against India's 50th GM Thej Kumar | Photo: Joydeep Dutta

GM Laxman R R won the Individual part of the All India Inter-Railway tournament | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Both Laxman and IM Vignesh N R scored 5.5/7 each, however due to a better tie-break score, Laxman won the tournament.

Laxman's unbeaten championship run

The tournament was organized by South Central Railway Sports Association at Hyderabad from 18th to 24th October 2019.

Final Standings in Team Championship

Rk.	SNo	Team	Team	Games	+	=	-	TB1	TB2	TB3	TB4
1	6	Metro	Metro	6	4	2	0	10	16,0	199,0	0
2	3	Central Railway	CR	6	3	2	1	8	16,0	210,0	0
3	1	ICF	ICF	6	4	0	2	8	16,0	189,8	0
4	4	Southern Railway	SR	6	3	2	1	8	15,0	201,0	0
5	2	Western Railway	WR	6	3	2	1	8	14,0	204,3	0

Complete Standings

Final Standings in Individual Championship

Rk.	SNo		Name	RtgI	Club/City	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3	TB4	TB5
1	8	GM	Laxman R.R.	2444	ICF	5,5	27,0	30,5	23,00	0,0	4
2	3	IM	Vignesh N R	2475	SR	5,5	24,0	27,5	20,75	0,0	5
3	4	IM	Das Arghyadip	2459	ER	5,0	28,5	32,5	23,25	0,0	3
4	6	IM	Ravi Teja S.	2455	WR	5,0	28,0	31,0	21,50	0,0	3
5	14	IM	Nitin S.	2360	SR	5,0	28,0	31,0	20,75	0,0	3
6	7	IM	Shyaamnikhil P	2455	ICF	5,0	26,5	29,5	20,50	0,0	3
7	21	GM	Roy Chowdhury Saptarshi	2294	Metro	5,0	26,0	28,0	19,00	0,0	3
8	11	IM	Gusain Himal	2420	WR	5,0	25,5	29,0	20,00	0,0	4
9	5	IM	Krishna C R G	2459	SWR	5,0	25,5	28,5	17,00	0,0	3
10	12	GM	Karthikeyan P.	2416	ICF	5,0	25,0	27,5	17,75	0,0	3
11	18	IM	Palit Somak	2321	Metro	5,0	24,5	27,5	18,00	0,0	4
12	26	IM	Praveen Kumar C	2199	ICF	5,0	24,5	26,5	16,50	0,0	5
13	9	GM	Thejkumar M. S.	2444	SWR	5,0	23,0	26,5	19,00	0,0	4
14	20	FM	Thakur Akash	2300	CR	4,5	28,5	31,5	19,50	0,0	2
15	17	IM	Rathnakaran K.	2325	SR	4,5	28,0	31,0	18,75	0,0	3
16	10	IM	Das Sayantan	2440	Metro	4,5	26,0	29,0	17,50	0,0	3
17	2	GM	Swapnil S. Dhopade	2495	CR	4,5	25,5	28,5	17,50	0,0	3
18	27	IM	Suvrajit Saha	2198	ER	4,5	25,5	27,0	16,50	0,0	3
19	28	IM	Murali Krishnan B T	2197	SR	4,5	24,0	26,5	15,75	0,0	3
20	23	IM	Sangma Rahul	2291	WR	4,5	23,5	26,0	15,25	0,0	3

Complete Standings

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