Most primary school graders look forward to that extra hour of physical training/games at school. It is no different for seven-year-old Amogh Bisht, a state level chess champion and student of VIBGYOR High-Marathahalli. Except, his flair for chess was recognised early on — leading up to Amogh clinching titles at several state level Chess championships. His recent participation was a stupendous success as well — On July 24 Amogh was adjudged the National Chess Champion at the prestigious ‘32nd Under 7 National Chess Tournament 2018 held in Tumkur, Karnataka. Amogh is officially selected to represent India for the world championship and Asian championship in 2019. We get chatty with the young tyke...
“Amogh was introduced to chess by me at the age of 3.5 years. Amogh used to be very naughty and wouldn’t sit in one place during his pre-school days. Once, we handed over a jigsaw puzzle to him so that he could engage himself in solving it, but to our surprise he started solving puzzles of a more advanced level. That’s when we decided to enroll him into an activity which demanded more attention and mental energy,” begins Manish Bisht, Amogh’s father. His tryst with chess goes back to the age of four, and there has been no looking back ever since. Amogh played his first tournament at the age of four years and received his first trophy i.e. ‘Youngest boy’ of the tournament in the 30th ICA monthly chess tournament in Bengaluru, 2016. Amogh received his first official standard International FIDE rating of 1071 at age of five. He achieved his rating after defeating a higher rated player in the third BRDCA fide-rated tournament in Bengaluru in 2016. The whiz kid also secured the 16th place in the 31 National Under 07 Open Chess Championship 2017 at Vijayawada, AP. Infact, Amogh was first in his age category (six years).
While chess seems to be his area of expertise, Amogh loves to play other forms of sports too. “I love playing badminton. But, chess is what I play regularly, as I juggle it with school. My parents love sports too, so we spend most of our time discussing and playing games,” he pipes.
With a world championship on the cards, Amogh has some serious training to do. “I love playing, and every time I appear for tournaments or championships, it’s only because I love playing. My parents are very supportive and they do not expect me to win all the time. I’d love to learn from every competition, and it’s great to see other students concentrate and play so well. It motivates me,” concludes the lil champ.
