Tournament report of K.J Seetharaman tourney at Chennai on Feb 16-17th with a total prize money in excess of Rs 1,00,000. - A report by R Venkatesh
Unfortunately we had a record low of only 27 teams participating in one of the most prestigious tourneys of S.India. This is the 15th edition of this event and in the first few editions we used to have 40+ teams participating regularly. Across the country, we are having an alarming dip in turnout in most of the regular tourneys.
Over the last couple of years. Some of the reasons for the poor turnout include increasing popularity of BBO which provides easy and inexpensive option to play the game, painful travel in most of the metros, prohibitive hotel costs and most importantly lack of any new blood/youngsters taking up the game resulting in not only lesser turnout but also polarization of existing talent in a few teams. Unless we somehow arrest this trend immediately, the future of the game is looking really bleak.
7 rounds of Swiss league were played to determine the 6 qualifiers for the final Round robin. Hot favorites and defending champions, Nest Inn topped the 7 round .
Swiss league qualification with a whopping 142 VPs followed by Well Knit (128), Kaushik’B’-Hyd (127), Faria-Hyd (124), GKS (116) and Chennai Online (112).
In the final RR, Well Knit won the event with 92 VPs followed by Nest Inn with 81 VPs. G.K.S Coimbatore finished 3rd followed by the 2 Hyd teams Farias, Kaushik ‘B’ and Chennai Online in that order. C.R Badrinath, R.Krishnan, D.Vijay, C.Krishna and R.Venkatesh were members of the victorious Well Knit team. Runners-up, Nest Inn comprised of K.R.Venkatraman, N.R. Kirubakaramoorthy, K.Krishnakumar, S.K. Chari, R.Kannan and Sreekrishnan. G.K.S Coimbatore comprised of Bhaskar, V.Suryanarayana, Narayana Iyer, Asokan, Ian Alburquerque and Ms Kalyani Eswaran.
Special thanks to Ms Kalyani Eswaran for keeping this tournament alive and for Gymkhana club and organizing committee led by Cawas Mistry and supported by Ms Sherien Ryan forthe excellent food and hospitality. The only visible area of improvement is to improve the playing conditions so that players don’t have to play under a shamiana in Feb.
The tournament was ably directed by Capt Sridhar and T.R.Rajagopal.
