Checkmating blindness in Ahmedabad, creating winners
Parth Shastri | TNN | Aug 1, 2016, 09.57 AM IST
AHMEDABAD: When Rajesh Rajput, 46, coaches 11-year old Swara Shah from the city in Chess moves, the chess set they use is slightly different and the method very different. Rajput insists that Swara, part of Gujarat’s junior Chess team and winner of many tournaments, remembers the position of the pieces without looking at them to form her strategy – something he has mastered over the years. Rajput can’t see the board.
Rajput, who is training 20-odd teens, is one of the few blind Chess players from Gujarat who have successfully carved a career in chess coaching to the sighted.
The state is not new to prolific blind Chess players. Vadodara, unofficial hub of blind Chess in Gujarat, has given seven times national champion Ashwin Makwana and India’s youngest national blind champion Darpan Inani. But now many blind Chess players with good World Chess Federation (FIDE) ratings are finding opportunities to coach youngsters for living or to prepare gen-next champs.
Hetal Shah, Swara’s father, says that Rajput helps her with memorizing the board and moves so that she can think without looking at the game, a technique which has greatly improved her strategies and response.
Sujit Chudasama, a 35-year old music teacher at a government school in Porbandar, is one of the top blind Chess players and often spars with the sighted players. “For many, Chess is visual in the sense that one has to register implications of every move but for the blind, the board serves as a map on which the pieces mark a spot. After one gets used to it, one can play the chess without the board. I often play Chess over phone with friends just by speaking coordinates,” says Chudasama who trains a number of kids.
Paritosh Dave, coordinator for Chess at Blind People’s Association (BPA) and promoter of inclusive Chess – where the blind play with the sighted – says that the state has 19 players with FIDE rating of over 1030 whereas the active players might be over 100.
CHESSBOARD
The chessboard for the blind has black and white squares signified by slightly low and high areas respectively. All the pieces have pegs so that they don’t move on the board. To distinguish black pieces from white, the black have tactile dot on it. Apart from these differences, the rules remain the same and the blind also use the clocks for timed games.
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