3rd Kolonnawa International Rated Chess Tournament 2017

The 3^rd Kolonnawa international Chess tournament started on the 8^th December 2017. The venue for this year‘s tournament was Parakramabahu College, Narahenpita. The tournament was a 9 round tournament. I was the only visually impaired player and organizers supported me a lot by providing necessary facilities for me to play the tournament.

There was no visually impaired category for this tournament. After 9 rounds I was able to score 6 points and my final rank was 61 out of 365 players.

 This will be my final tournament for 2017. I played 3 tournaments this year. In the first tournament I became the first visually impaired Chess player in Sri Lanka to participate in an international rated Chess tournament organized for sighted players. In my 2^nd tournament I was able to gain FIDE ratings to become the first Sri Lankan visually impaired Chess player to get FIDE international rating. In my 3rd tournament I played well to get 6 points out of 9 rounds while I got 5 and 5.5 points respectively previous 2 tournaments which had 10 rounds each.

My goal is to be in the top 10 visually impaired Chess players in the world by 2019. That makes the year 2018 a hard working year for me. The world visually impaired individual Chess championship will be held in Italy 2019 and the Asian visually impaired Chess championship in Philippines 2020.

3rd Negambo Chess Festival 2017 Chess Championship.

I always believed that to improve Chess among visually impaired Chess players is to give them an opportunity to play with regular vision Chess players in their tournaments. The message I send to Mr. Dulan Edirisingha, one of the administrators of the Facebook group www.chesslife.lk was published on the group and one of the organizers of the Negambo Chess Festival 2017  Mr. Malon Fenando gave an opportunity for visually impaired Chess players to participate in the 3rd Negambo Chess Festival 2017 Chess Championship.

The event was held from the 20^th of August to 24^th of August. More than 500 players participated in this tournament. Four visually impaired Chess players including myself were invited for this tournament. But other three players couldn’t participate in the tournament due to various reasons. I didn’t want to miss this golden opportunity.

I didn’t have big expectations for this tournament. I just wanted to participate and to get a good experience. I was so excited and happy to become the first visually impaired Chess player in Sri Lanka to play in a such a big event. I was really satisfied the way I played in the tournament. I got 5 points out of 10 rounds. The experience I got by playing with regular vision Chess players was so precious for me. Everyone was so friendly and helpful. I played my games on a special Chess board designed for visually impaired players, it was a new experience for other Chess players to play a game with me.

Since 2014 I am looking for a Chess trainer. It is a challenging task for a trainer because most of the Chess lessons are designed in visual form. But now with the latest technology we can read printed documents, notes etc. My goal is to be the Asian visually impaired Chess Champion in the next IBCA Asian Chess Championship. If I get the proper training and guidance I believe I can achieve my goal.

I would like to thank the organizers of the 3^rd Negambo Chess festival, for giving me an opportunity to play in the tournament. All the arbiters for carrying out the games I played according to the rules for a visually impaired player vs regular vision player and for all the other players for their support. I would like to congratulate Nanayakkara J A K Saranath for winning the chess tournament!

Finally I would like to share a game that I played in the tournament, which I enjoyed the most. I’m playing White.

1.e4, d5

2.exd5, Qxd5

3.Nc3, Qa5

4.Nf3, Bf4

5.d4, Nf6

6.Bd3, Bxd3

7.Qxd3, h6

8.O-O, e6

9.a3, c6

10.b4, Bxb4

11.axb4, Qxa1

12.Bxh6, Qxf1+

13.Kxf1, Rxh6

14.Ne4, Nxe4

15.Qxe4, Na6

16.b5, f5

17.Qe5, Nb4

18.Qxg7, Rxh2

19.Ne5, Rh1+

20.Ke2, Re1+

21.Kxe1, Nxc2+

22.Kd2, Nxd4

23.Qf7+, Kd8

24.Qd7#

The Asian Pacific Chess Championship for the Visually Challenge 2017.

I was so happy to be selected for the Asian chess tournament for the visually challenge 2017. The tournament was an individual tournament and 3 players were selected for the tournament from Sri Lanka.

This was the first time I represented my country in an international sports event. The tournament was very tuff. Indian players dominated the tournament, winning the top 5 places. I placed 20^th in the tournament by getting 2 points out of 8 rounds, while my other team members got 1 point each. I had some good wins against higher rated visually challenged players via Skype real time tournaments before we went to India for the Asian Chess tournament, but when it comes to real tournament games the atmosphere is totally different. We last played our national tournament in 2014, since then we didn’t have any tournaments organized for the visually challenged players in Sri Lanka. This was a great experience for me.

During the tournament we had 2 workshops in the topic of “How to develop Chess in Asia for the visually challenge”.  And I learned a lot from the case study presented by Mr. Charu Daththa how they developed Chess in India for the visually challenged. What I felt was we are in a similar situation where India was in 1998. No one has taken the responsibility to develop Chess in Sri Lanka for the visually challenged.  This is a good time for all Chess lovers in Sri Lanka to get together and develop Chess for the visually challenge in Sri Lanka.