With their faces less than a foot away, the top seed and his challenger introduce themselves across the table. It’s the National Open Chess Tournament for the Blind and Srikrishna Udupa is one of the favourites. Udupa is expected to get through without trouble against Ajay Kumar of Kerala, but the two make small talk as they await the signal to start.

“What do you do?” asks Ajay, to which Udupa replies: “I’m a chess coach. I used to coach for free, but I ran into some financial trouble, so I had to do this full time.”

Viswanathan Anand may have scored a facile win over Vladimir Kramnik to claim the world championship in 2008 but his next opponent for the title is likely to pose a more serious threat to the Indian Grandmaster. On current form alone, the Bulgarian GM Veselin Topalov will be a tougher nut to crack than Kramnik. Topalov has earned the right to challenge Anand for the world championship title after beating Gata Kamsky of USA in a thrilling eight-game match by a 4.5-2.5 scoreline.

Dubai  - Linares - one of the most-renowned tournaments in world chess - is surrendering to the power of an Arab businessman, who is set to bring the best players to the desert in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 2010.

"We pay the expenses of players and the prizes, I think around 2 million euros (some 2.5 million dollars)," Sulaiman Al Fahim told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview in Dubai.

"From 2010, the tournament will be held in Spain and the UAE," he said.

KR Gopi Vichar Manch and Sahyadri Samajik Seva Sanstha organised an inter-school chess competition for school children of Airoli. This competition was conducted at the Heggade Bhavana, Sector-15 on Sunday and 370 students participated in it. The competition was inaugurated by KR Gopi, President of Small Scale Industries Association.

There were four categories in the championship- standard 1-3, standard 4-5, standard 6-7 and standard 8-9. Three winners were chosen from each category. The 'best school' trophy was given to NHP School, Airoli for maximum participation and winning maximum number of prizes.

It was a tough day for World champion Viswanathan Anand in the office as he had to play out a hard-fought draw with Grandmaster Lenier Dominguez of Cuba in the third round of the 22nd Ciudad de Leon chess tournament. The draw was agreed to in 41 moves.

Anand maintained to be in the third position with 1.5 points behind Levon Aronian (Armenia) and Alexander Grischuk of Russia.

Currently, both Aronian and Grischuk are placed at number one position with two points each.

It was a proud moment for World Champion Viswanathan Anand, when he again won against Russian Vladimir Kramnik in the sixth game with white pieces.