International Matters
Dr Alok Saxena hands over to Dr Ambar Chatterjee
Dr Alok Saxena was ICCF National Delegate for India since May 2005, a long span of twenty years! Now he hands over to me.
At the beginning, shortly after AICCF was formed in 1998, it was Late Shri V.D.Pandit who was responsible for making us a member federation of ICCF and he took care of all ICCF activities upto 1999. I was previously in this post from 2002 to 2005. Dr Krishna Prabhakar was handling this from 1999 to 2002.
ICCF Congress
The ICCF Congress 2024 was held in Llandudno, Wales. During this Congress, there was a proposal from Hungarian Correspondence Chess players to host the 2025 ICCF Congress in Hungary. However, around November 2024, the Hungarian CC Federation notified that they will not be able to host the next Congress. Accordingly ICCF began to consider if some other Member Federation would come forward as host, or perhaps ICCF could themselves be host. Failing these options, the next Congress could be an online event.
Laurels
 | Player Sumeet Bhattacharjee (ICCF Id 281560) became ICCF Correspondence Chess Expert. The title was confirmed by the ICCF Qualifications Commissioner on 2nd March 2025. |
 | Om Prakash (ICCF Id 280243) became ICCF-IM in the year 2020. After that he is striving for the SIM title. In Feb 2025 he has obtained a norm for ICCF-SIM. He leads the ICCF Olympiad 23 Preliminaries - Section 2 where he has scored 4.5 points from 7 games and one game is in progress. |
 | Rabirashmi Roy (ICCF Id 281147) has earned the title of ICCF International Arbiter. In 2022 he became ICCF Tournament Director Level 2 as well as CCM (Correspondence Chess Master). |
 | Saurabh Das (ICCF Id 280273) earned the Correspondence Chess Expert Title in 2018, however he had not recieved his medal. On contacting us, we arranged for him to recieve his CCE medal. |
Congratulations to all for earning honour for India!
AA/C19/Final, 19th Africa Asia Zonal Championship Final
The tournament is completed. CCM Gautam De finished with 4 pts from 8 games (all draws) thus falling short of the target of 5 pts required for an IM norm.CCM Sailesh Chandra finished with 3.5 pts while he required 4.5 pts to obtain an IM norm.
We hope you can perform better in other tournaments to reach your title norms!
AA/TC05, 5th Africa Asia Team Championship
The tournament is completed with team South Africa taking first place with 29.5 pts. Team India A came 2nd with 28.5 points and Team India B took the 3rd spot with 26.5 pts. Team India C came 6th with 23 points. All in all a fine performance by the three India teams. The composition of the teams is given below:
| Board | India A | India B | India C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IM Prakash, Om | CCM Chauhan, Rakesh Kumar | CCM Turaga, Mohan |
| 2 | CCM Datta, Devangshu | CCE Sengupta, Arnab | Agrawal, Rakesh |
| 3 | CCM Chatterjee, Ambar | Narasimha P, Navaneetha | Sharma, Amit |
| 4 | CCM Gupta, Aniruddha Dutta | Krishnamurthy, Prabhanandan | Vyas, Nilesh |
| 5 | CCM Mandviwala, Pervez Godrez | Das, Satyajit | Maurya, Sushil Kumar |
| 6 | CCM Saxena, Alok | Panwar, Ramesh | Bhattacharjee, Sumeet |
There was also a mixed team AA Team B where CCE Srinath, Tanmay played on the top board.
Notable Performances: Arnab Sengupta topped Board 2 with 5 pts thereby getting a CCM norm.
Prabhanandan Krishnamurthy topped Board 4 with 5 points thereby getting both CCE and CCM norms.
Sumeet Bhattacharjee topped Board 6 with a score of 6.5 resulting in a CCE norm.
ICCF Olympiad 23 Preliminaries - Section 2
The Indian team is led by T.Pavan Kumar. India is in 7th place from among 9 teams below Slovakia, Portugal, New Zealand, USA, Croatia and Romania but ahead of Indonesia and Hungary. Sasikran on Board 1 has drawn 6 games and 2 games are ongoing. On Board 2 T.Pavan Kumar has secured draws in 3 games amongst the leaders and is playing competitively in 5 games. On Board 3 India is represented by R.K.Chauhan where he has completed 7 drawn games with the game against CCM Király, István in progress. Gautam De is currently in 5th place (from 9 participants) with a final score of 3.5/8. Lalit Kapoor has finished in the 3rd spot with 4/9 on Board 5. IM Om Prakash is in TOP position at 4.5 points (2 wins) with 1 ongoing game against CCM Leisner, Jon S. of USA. We wish him best of luck in the last game and he has good chances of finishing at the top on Board 6!
WCCC43CT 3
Sasikiran with 5 points and 2 games remaining is out of reach of getting a GM norm. He is currently placed 10th in this Category 9 tournamentAlex Dunne Memorial Invitational - A
Sasikiarn finished in the 7th spot among 15 participants with 7.5 points and again missed the 8 points needed to acquire a GM norm.
Champions League 2024 B2
The Indian Stalwarts Team led by Tanmay Srinath put in a good performance securing 26 points and are placed 8th among 15 teams.
INDIA-BULGARIA (started 12-04-2023)
The Indian Team led by Rakesh Agrawal has won the event with a score of 13.5 - 12.5 despite the unconcerned withdrawal of Pawan Dodeja. Hearty congratulations to Team India!
Here is a game where Rakesh Agrawal trounced high FIDE-rated Bulgarian player Nikolai Hristov illustrating once again that OTB prowess does not necessarily mean CC strength!
INDIA-NETHERLANDS (started 20-04-2023)
Congratulations again to Team India on a convincing 28.5 - 19.5 victory against Netherlands despite default losses by Amit Sharma and Akhilesh Nagare. Plus performances: Devangshu Datta 2.5/4, Santhosh Paul 2.5/4, Sunil Somani 1.5/2, Anil Anand 3/4, Ayush Somani 2/2, Yusley Cardenas 3.5/4, Rakesh Agrawal 3/4, Nilesh Vyas 3/4.
In the game below Nilesh Vyas leaves his opponent totally helpless without any useful moves. Faced with the White King marching unimpeded into his territory, Black (Ber Dahlkamp) tendered his resignation.
INDIA-USA (started 30/10/2023)
India and USA are neck and neck with 19.5 points each. The game which will decide the match will be last pending game Valsan K. versus CCE Neale, Mark. Who will win, or will it be tied?
Here we give the game where CCE Rakesh Agrawal played to a 103 move victory against CCE David Cofer.
INDIA-MEXICO (started 20-11-2023)
India leads 16-15 in the match with 3 games pending: Castellanos Hernández, Emilio Agustín - Ambar Chatterjee, Vazquez Gallardo, Miguel - Amit Sharma and Martínez Camacho, Victor Hugo - Peter Brodie. Peter Brodie an Australian player is an AIWCF player and is playing on Board 17 for India.
INDIA-SWEDEN (started 01-09-2024)
In this match, India is not faring well. We allowed several new players to join. Aruna HN, and G.B.Akshith defaulted without a fight and TarakeswaraRao Gurugubelli quickly lost both his games with beginner level play. It is not clear if our new players understand that play in ICCF is engine allowed. If you know the correct use of engines, you cant lose like this!
It is clear that AIWCF has come of age and is holding its own, even emerging ahead in matches against countries with strong CC players. However if we allow new comers to take the stage, we obviously can't have good results. We encourage new players to join our online training program (aiwcf.org/training/online_training.php) before taking up play in ICCF.
2nd World Team Cup
India will put up a team of 20 players for the ICCF 2nd World Team Cup. The tournament will start on 15 August 2025. We already have 25 registered entries. We are allowing registrations upto 10th May 2025, so if you haven't registered yet, you can do so now (login to AIWCF server and click New Tournament → Join 2nd World Team Cup).