All Goa Rapid Chess Tournament 2018 kickstarts

The first tournament for unseeded players was held at Ponda on Sunday. This one day affair saw 278 players participate with organizers saying that they were forced to close the entries 2 days prior as they had crossed their capacity.

Despite the lack of resources, infrastructure, and only nominal government support Goa has produced very good players. Anurag Mhamal’s was recently elevated as a grandmaster, the first from Goa.

Before him, Bhakti Kulkarni was the first to attain women’s grandmaster status in 2012. Rohan Ahuja is already an international master and is likely to follow in Anurag’s footsteps. Earlier too Ivan Furtado has achieved laurels for the state.