Aarush Bathula

CHESS IS A WAR OVER THE BOARD.THE OBJECT IS TO CRUSH THE OPPONENTS MIND

                                                                                        - BOBBY FISCHER

Chess is basically a board game played between two members. The game can last up to 6 hours in tournaments where each player controls their 16 pieces of black or white. The game is similar to a warand the main objective of the game is to check mate the opponents King where there is no way for Escape.

 Aarush Bathula A third grade kid moving towards good grades in the game of war.

Aarush, a seven-year-old kid from the southern city of Hyderabad is no stranger to success. Aarush appears to be a naughty, shy kid. But looks can be deceptive.

Aarush started his journey in the game of chess at the age of five under the guidance of his coach Mr Ram Rajasekhara Reddi and his parents. Aarush has participated in several state-level and national tournaments conducted at various parts of the country. At the age of just  six, he became The Telangana champion in his first onboard tournament. He won silver medal in Asian  school chess championship in June 2021. He  won bronze in under 8 national championships recently in May 2022. He had also been titled as the three-time chess champion of Telangana in under 7 categories

Aarush started his coaching in Dec 2019 and just after 3 months of initial coaching he was confined to home due to lockdown. During the lock down, Aarush spent his days at home practicing for around eight hours to formulate new tricks and strategies which gained him a better base in the game. Aarush is one of the most ambitious players in the game of chess in India. Knowing that chess was going to be his life, he started to put more hard work towards becoming the youngest international master before hitting 10 years and grandmaster before 12.

During the pandemic tournaments were not held in India. The federation came up with an idea of conducting countrywide online championships where around 10,000 players from various parts of the country participated in their respective categories. Aarush was also one among the hundreds of players, who participated in under seven national schools online championships and secured sixth position in the tournament. As a result of his incredible performance, he got selected from India for the Asian schools chess championship where he displayed great skills and Bagged silver medal in the tournament.

After displaying incredible performance to win some of the most difficult tournaments and participating in rapid and classical tournaments across the country  he opend his rapid rating of 1263 in October 2021.

From the month of January 2022 Arush had all his focus On becoming a national champion in under 8 and under 10 category in 2022. In spite of the disappointment of his 23rd position in the under 10 categories held in Jammu, Aarush with his amazing performance, secured bronze medal with 9/11 points after winning final 6 matches in a row in the Under 8 national championship 2022 held in Vijayawada. He opened his standard rating at 1293 in May 2022. At an age where boys would trade an arm and a limb for endless hours of gaming, Aarush mastered the art of focus in a sport which made him qualify for the Asian, commonwealth and world championships to represent India. He is scheduled to officially represent India in the World Championships from 15 to 28 September,2022 in Georgia.

The son of a software engineer and a homemaker, Aarush is a very kind and friendly kid who is self-driven, diligent and hardworking from a young age

Players in India who has several dreams and goals of achieving great heights in the sport clearly needs more deep pocketed sponsors in order to fulfil their chess potential. Aarush is also one among the best players, who is in search of a good sponsor to help him participate in several international tournaments and support him in the journey of becoming a grand master.

Chess in India 

The game has a consistent growth from the last decade. India is ranked number four now in the entire world and India’s one among the four countries in the world who has more grandmasters. Today India has 7 players among the top 100 in the world.  There are around 73 grandmasters now up from 20 in 2007.

It was Viswanathan Anand, the five-time world champion who single-handedly created a revolution about chess in India. He won several titles and established him as one of the brightest stars in the world-class chess. He inspired thousands of youngsters to take up chess as a career.