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Editor Speaks |
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The second quarter of year 2021 was an especially bad year for India with rising number of Covid-19 pandemic caseload going above four lac cases, about 4 times its worst figures in 2020. A second Corona wave as it was called, it severely strained the already fragile medical infrastructure. Most Indians have lost at least one of their near and dear ones. Currently, the cases have dropped to about 40,000 cases/day but still we are not out of danger with new Delta variants emerging as third wave sweeps several states such as Kerala and Maharashtra. The vaccination drive is on but we are still a long way away from reaching the herd immunity target of 70% achieved by many developed countries.
We lost two of AIWCF’s most-respected stalwarts, late Shri Meherhomji (former Treasurer) and late Shri V.D. Pandit (first Editor of this bulletin) in July 2021, the latter to Covid pandemic. This issue of the Bulletin is dedicated to their everlasting memory by AIWCF fraternity.
A major OTB event in this period has been the Chess World Cup, concurrently held at same venue for both Open and women’s event. The Editor has provided a brief write-up in Chess tidbits on this just concluded event in Sochi, Russia which was won by Polish no. 1, GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, rated 2738 ELO ahead of World champion Magnus Carlsen, former Challenger, Sergey Karjakin and other more celebrated contenders. Another great news was Indian-born US whizkid Abhimanyu Mishra achieving the youngest Grandmaster title.
Mohan Turaga has once again done a remarkable job by annotating several games for our readers and providing 55 interesting games.
Nagesh J., FIDE Instructor explores the topic whether Chess is beneficial in his brief article.
There is an interesting subject of Colour complex by Hrishikesh Chavan from one of his chess classes titled “Wrong Bishop”.
Om Prakash has once again challenged the notion of “Draw death in chess” with some truly remarkable study-like positions in his article “Chess is dead, but not dead yet”.
As usual, looking forward to your comments and suggestions for improvement on the AIWCF Whatsapp group or by Email.
Sincerely Yours,
Anil Anand
Bulletin Editor