Editor Speaks
We present to all Readers and chess enthusiasts the second issue of this year’s AIWCF Bulletin.
2025 is an outstanding year for our AIWCF players. Tanmay Srinath has catapulted to SIM (Senior International Master) title directly from CCM (Correspondence Chess Master), a rare instance in CC today. Aniruddha Duttagupta has recently become an IM (International Master). Rakesh Agrawal has won the CCM title. Om Prakash Mohanty made his first SIM norm. Gautam De and Mohan Turaga are close to achieving their final IM norms in the ongoing Afro-Asian Zonal championship final. Rabirashmi Roy made his first IM norm.
There is a new superstar on the Indian horizon, Pranav V, our 75 th grandmaster. He recently won the inaugural Fujairah Masters with a rating performance above 2800. Similarly, Divya Deshmukh became a grandmaster after beating reigning world rapid champion Koneru Humpy in the recent World Cup.
CCM Mohan Turaga, our Games Editor, has provided the Games section with his trademark style of providing annotation to correspondence chess games with illustration of plans from GM-level games. This time, as a bonus, he has provided some interesting games of Vishy Anand vs Kasparov.
Our newest SIM Tanmay Srinath has provided an insight to his successful CC chess journey in his article Maybe This Was Always the Path.
CCM Sailesh Chandra has provided another article in his Think like an Engine series. It has the interesting theme of the power of an exchange sacrifice.
The Editor’s Chess Tidbits covers the major events since the last edition of AIWCF Bulletin. Wesley So, the Philippines-born US grandmaster pipped Praggnanandhaa and Caruana in tiebreaks on last day of high drama to emerge champion at the prestigious Sinquefield Cup. Carlsen won the Paris freestyle/chess 960 event beating #2 Nakamura.
Ju Wenjun easily beat Tan Zhongyi to retain her world title. She followed it up by beating world #1 and former world champion Hou Yifan in Speed chess final.
In a shocking incident, 22-year old grandmaster, Kirill Shevchenko was stripped of his GM title for cheating.
AIWCF 1521 championship will be decided based on the Tanmay Srinath vs Rakesh Agrawal final game. At the moment, Tanmay Srinath, Alok Saxena and Aniruddha Dutta Gupta are all tied at 8/14 points.
AIWCF 1522 championship is slated to start soon. In a first, it will be played on ICCF server and offers chances for ICCF norms.
2025 Rest of the World team has AIWCF participation comprised of Arnab Sengupta, Rakesh Kumar Chauhan, Pervez Mandviwala, Rakesh Agrawal, Devangshu Datta and Pankaj Dubey.
AIWCF 20-member team is playing mighty opponents Ukraine and Brazil in the 2nd ICCF World Team Cup which started on 15 Aug 2025.
Best of luck to all participants!
Ancient city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan is currently hosting the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss. Praggnanandhaa (Open section) and Anna Muzychuk (women only section) are the top seeds. There will be two slots available from this tournament for the 2026 Candidates. On 07-Sep-2025, in round four, 14 year old Turkish prodigy Yagiz Erdogmus played an amazing game versus Aditya Mittal, capping with a neat Queen sacrifice, which is widely being hailed as among the greatest games ever played.
As usual, looking forward to your comments, suggestions and feedback on AIWCF
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Sincerely Yours,
Anil Anand
Bulletin Editor