Tollygunge:
A 14-year-old boy from Regent Estate, who loves watching superhero films, has won silver in the National Sub-Junior Chess Championship.
Koustav Chatterjee, a student of Garden High School, was leading the table for most of the U-15 tournament, held between October 1 and 9 at Ahmedabad. His score was tied with Sankalp Gupta of Maharashtra, who went on to win the championship because of a better tie-break score.
This is the second consecutive year that Koustav missed out on gold in the sub-junior nationals. “Last year he lost by a narrow margin, too,” his father Kalyan Chatterjee said.
Kalyan, 52, introduced Koustav to chess in 2010. “He had a great memory. He could remember all 52 cards in a pack at the age of 5,” the private tutor said. Koustav’s mother Babita is a state government employee posted at Bikash Bhavan.
The boy started training at a Dhakuria institute at the age of seven and joined Dibyendu Barua Chess Academy in 2015. The same year he won gold at the 2015 Commonwealth championships in Delhi in the U-12 category.
“Koustav has a great temperament. He is one of the best young players in the state,” said Atanu Lahiri, the general secretary of the Bengal Chess Association, who has seen Koustav from close quarters over the years.
“He tends to get overconfident at times. Otherwise, he is grandmaster material.”
Koustav’s favourite player is Anatoly Karpov, the Russian grandmaster and former world champion. “From the current lot, I like Magnus Carlsen, who practises three to four hours a day. I love studying openings of Karpov and Carlsen on my computer,” said the teenager whose favourite subjects are math and chemistry.
When Koustav is not playing chess, he loves watching superhero films and TV series. From the Star Wars to Marvel’s The Defenders, his list is quite exhaustive. Luke Skywalker and Wolverine are his favourite characters.
Koustav also loves collecting coins. The most valuable item in his collection is the Uruguayan Peso, which he collected in Montevideo when he went there to participate in the World Youth Chess Championship in September. “I could not win a medal but playing against international players was a great learning experience,” he told Metro.
By virtue of finishing second in the sub-junior nationals, Kosutav has secured a berth in two international tournaments in 2018, the World Youth Chess Championship in Georgia and the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Thailand. “I don’t want to lose focus in the big stage,” said Koustav.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Debraj Mitra / Thursday – October 19th, 2017