Date:18/09/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/18/stories/2007091857672000.htm

Sport - Chess

An avoidable controversy

Principal Correspondent

KOZHIKODE: Chess is in the news for the wrong reasons in Kerala at the moment — primarily because of two press meets.

In the first, at Aluva on September 2, 18-year-old G.N. Gopal, the strongest player the State has ever produced, had, reportedly, made statements against Chess Association-Kerala (CAK).

He said that a few CAK officials had asked him to name them as his coaches instead of International Master (IM) Varughese Koshy, under whom he has been training for the last five years.

On Saturday (September 15), CAK met the press here and distributed a release saying that the association’s executive committee on Friday had decided to take stern action against Gopal for the remarks he and his father, B. Narayana Pillai, had publicly made against the CAK.

The CAK officials then said that a decision would be taken only after seven days, the time given to Gopal to respond to the show cause notice.

‘First step’

“The show cause notice is the first step of taking action against Gopal,” P. Venugopal, secretary, CAK said on Monday.

At the press meet, one of the CAK officials said Gopal hadn’t become a GM yet. But, in a release issued on September 1, the CAK had clearly said that Gopal had become a GM.

The fact is, Gopal, who had made his third and final GM norm at the Asian Zonal championship in Dhaka last month, still has to touch 2500 Elo points for getting the GM title; he is likely to be listed with 2497 points when FIDE releases its next rating list next month.

Gopal said he hadn’t received the show cause from CAK till Monday. He left Kochi for New Delhi on Monday on way to Cebu (Philippines) to play in the Asian championship, to be held from September 19 to 29.

“I had told reporters that I was being pressurised by O.T. Anilkumar, M.B. Muralidharan and P.S. Amir to name them as my coaches so that they could get the credit for my success,” Gopal said. “But everyone knows that Koshy has been my coach for the last five years. Anilkumar, Muralidharan and Amir were only my playing partners.”

In the press release dated September 15, CAK says that there were just 15 FIDE-rated players in the State till 2005 (that is, before CAK took charge) and now there are 120 rated players. But FIDE’s first rating list of 2005 contains a lot more than 15 Kerala players; there are well over 60 of them.