Arvinder Preet finishes first at the FIDE World Amateur Championship

What's the story?

On Monday, Arvinder Preet from Ludhiana won The FIDE World Amateur Championship. He thus became the second Indian to win the prestigious title, the first one being Viraf Avari who won it way back in 1998. The World Amateur Championship was being held in Cagliari, Italy this time around and concluded on Monday.

In case you didn't know...

Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) or the World Chess Federation organizes the World Amateur Championship in a bid to give exposure to non-professional chess players.

These Championships have a glorious past and the first one dates back to the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the second one in 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There was no visible distinction between amateur and professional made by the chess community back in the day, so the Championship was discontinued in 1928. However, FIDE decided to restore it in 1995 and it has become an annual affair since then.

The heart of the matter

In more recent times, Amateur has been defined as a player with a FIDE rating below 2000. There is also a clause that he/she must not have attained a rating of more than 2000 in the previous 2 years. A split into U-2300, U-2000 and U-1700 categories was decided upon in 2016 and it has been followed since.

Chances of winning were meagre for Arvinder as he only managed 1.0/2 after his loss in the second round. However, he came back strongly, finishing with 6.0/7 in the next rounds taking his total tally to an impressive 7.0/9.

Arvinder won the Championship in the under-2300 category. He was never a favourite to win the Championship as he was seeded 26th out of 45 participants and had a rating of 2069. However, the 37-year-old who works for the Indian railways defied all odds to win the Championship.

What's next?

By winning the mega event, Arvinder will gain a total 73 Elo, which is a rating system used for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess.

Author's take

This was his first show at an International tournament and he has started off in a tremendous fashion by bagging the first prize. Hopefully, he will be able to continue performing well.