[edit] Vibha Khel Mela receives community support year after year

India Tribune

The 2008 Khel Mela, Vibha’s 6th annual charity chess and table tennis tournament, took place on March 15th, at the gaming center Waba Game, in Duluth. A tornado had hit Atlanta for the first time ever the night before, and the weather reports predicted severe thunderstorms and hail for the day. Fortunately, in the early morning the raging storms finally subsided, and droves of our ever enthusiastic players showed up at the venue. The 2008 Khel Mela got off to a lively start as planned with the men’s table tennis singles tournament at 9 AM and the chess tournament at 10 AM.

[edit] Table Tennis

The men’s singles event is fiercely competed every year, and this year was no exception with 40 players total. The tournament used a combination format with the initial rounds played round robin and subsequent rounds, knockout.

Men’s singles finalist Kiran Kulkarni breezed through his preliminary rounds, with his entire family cheering him on. Kulkarni has represented the Indian state of Maharashtra and had almost made it to the Indian national team, and we were pleased a have a player of his caliber at the event.

The Atlanta Georgia Table Tennis Association (AGTTA) had several members in force at the tournament. In the singles finals, Kulkarni played one such member James Morris. Morris had a tough match against fellow AGTTA member Gerald Echols in the quarterfinals, but otherwise also made it through easily to the finals.

It was a fitting finale as these were the two best players in the draw. After Kulkarni lost the first set, he played a tight defense to beat Morris in a tough four-setter.

The men’s doubles event had 16 teams participating. The finalists were Gerald Echols and James Morris and who competed against fellow AGTTA members Andrew Dyl and Rene Nielsen. And as they usually do at the AGTTA, Echols and Morris beat Dyl and Nielsen.

And this in spite of their being the only retirees and of having had to play continuous matches for hours beforehand. Echols and Morris displayed exemplary spirit and we salute them for it. Echols announced during the prize distribution that “He has never played against a finer or friendlier bunch of people.”

There was increased turnout this year in the women’s draw. Yiling Hu defeated last year’s junior singles champion Sameera Omar in a tough five-setter. Miss Hu went on to win the mixed doubles title with Shak Shaheed, beating the father and daughter pair of Haneef and Sameera Omar.

The junior singles matches were also competitive, and in order to accommodate the Khel Mela chess tournament participants, two junior boys singles events were held. In the morning Ameet Amin beat all his opponents, and in the afternoon Aadil Omar won first place undefeated. In the junior girl’s singles event, Anjana Kallarackal beat Meenu Putta to win first prize.

This year we added a teams tournament for table tennis, which was great fun, as most teams tournaments are. Each team had 4-5 people, and each round consisted of 2 doubles matches and 3 singles matches.

The winning team was comprised of doubles finalists Gerald Echols and James Morris and the doubles runners up Andrew Dyl and Rene Nielsen.

[edit] Chess

For this year’s chess tournament, we had a grand total of 55 people, our biggest turnout ever and almost double the number of participants from last year, with the K-3, K-6, and Open divisions having the largest draws.

And, as always, now for the sixth year running, we had Stephen Schneider as tournament director. Schneider is the founder and director of the chess school Championship Chess, author of the Scholastic Chess Series, Member-At-Large of the Georgia Chess Association, and if we may say so, all round admirable human being.

Schneider’s associate, chess teacher Mark Couvillion also came to help with the tournament. A third chess teacher Vijaykumar Gandapodi distributed the prizes. We are honored and grateful to have the help and support of these men.

The tournament used the standard Swiss-system format, which allows everyone, including those who have lost matches, to continue playing to the end. The primary and elementary school divisions played a fast chess game in which players were assigned other partners as soon as their match ended. They did not have to wait for everyone else to finish before they could play their next match, as in most tournaments. This allowed participants to play as many as 7 matches in a span of three hours and generated great energy and excitement among the children.

In the K-3 category, after 6 rounds, Prashanth Sampathkumar emerged as the clear winner, having won all his rounds. Rahul Maran won undefeated after 7 rounds in the K-6 category. Last year’s K-6 winner, fifth grader Tarun Daniel, was this year’s K-8 winner against a tough opponent in Abhinav Reddy. In the K-12 category, Charles Ekono won first place.

For the open division, the time control used was Sudden Death / 30 minutes (SD/30), meaning each player had a maximum of 30 minutes play per match, after which a winner or a tie was declared. This is still a relatively fast chess game.

This year, we had two highly rated players David Hater and Sumit Sohani in the Open section. Hater is ranked 20th in Georgia and has the rating of chess expert, a title earned by the top 1% of all US Chess Federation tournament chess players. Fifth grader Sohani tied for 25th place in the US K-5 Championship and is currently ranked 30th in the nation for his age group.

Sohani tied Hater in an upset, and there was ultimately a three-way tie between Hater, Sohani, and a third player Milton Chandradas. This was resolved by a playoff which Hater won. Sohani took second place, and Chandradas came in third.

Schneider remarked that the combination of fast chess (the SD/30 time control), which is difficult to play because people tend to make mistakes when time is so limited, together with the fact that the tournament was unrated, allowed rated chess players who would otherwise not play such a fast game because it might hurt their rating, to participate.

[edit] A Family Affair

We would like to recognize three families in particular: the Hater family (David, Andrew, and Joanna), the Kanchusthambham brothers (Jaganmohan, Srinivasarao, Suresh Kumar), and the Omar family (Haneef, Sameera, and Aadil), all members of which took home a trophy. Vibha promotes the Khel Mela as a family event, and it is immensely gratifying to see multiple members of a family participate.

We would also like to thank all our participants, volunteers, and donors for making this event possible.

Ambika Shankar, who was organizing this event for the first time, had this to say about the tournament:

“Ours is a unique tournament in which amateurs and seasoned players alike, and most importantly, entire families, can participate and have fun. We hope to make this an Atlanta tradition and a Vibha tradition for many years to come.”

We at Vibha look forward to seeing you at next year’s Khel Mela.

[edit] Donations

This tournament, along with all our charity fund raisers, raises money essentially for schooling for poor children in India and for American children’s charities, and we would be grateful for any donation you could make.

If you would like to enroll in our automatic donation program “Help Them Grow” (HTG), please visit http://www.vibha.org/HTG.

Please visit our website http://www.atlanta.vibha.org to learn about our upcoming entertaining fund raisers and about how to get involved.