Upcoming players felicitated at the GSCA Annual General Meeting.

World Under 8 Girls Champion and Asian Schools Under 7 Girls Champion
Ivana Furtado was felicitated by the Goa State Chess Association at the Annual
General Meeting held on January 7th for her stupendous feats
throughout the year 2006 and also for being selected as 'Person of the
Year' by the prestigious weekly Goa Today.

Ivana has a busy calendar this year as she will have to defend her title
at the World Youth Chess Championships to be held in Antalya, Turkey
from 17th November to 29th November, 2007. She will also be playing in the
Asian Youth Championships in Dubai in April and in the World Schools
Championships in Halkidiki, Greece from 24th April to 6th May, 2007.

Besides Ivana, the GSCA also felicitated Bhakti Kulkarni for standing
first in the Asian Youth Chess Champioships in the Teheran, Iran in the Girls Under
14 Section. Bhakti had also bagged Gold in the Commonwealth Under 18 Girls Section
in the recently concluded tournament in Mumbai.

GSCA also felicitated Cyrus Perreira who stood 5th in the Nationals
Under 9 in Solapur and Niraj Saripalli and Anurag Mhammal who stood 9th and 10th respectively in the Nationals Under 11 tournament which was held in Chennai.

This was held as part of the celebrations which are being held to
commemorate the 30th year of existence of the GSCA. The prestigious National 'B' tournament has been alloted to Goa for the year 2008 and this is the first time that
this premier event will be held in our state!!

Three more players make it to the FIDE list.

Three more Goan players made it to the FIDE list to cap off a remarkable 2006 for Goan chess. These players are Meloiza Celianne Carvalho (1926), coach Amogh S Namshiker (1859) and World Champion Ivana Furtado's elder brother Keegan Furtado (1870). With this the total number of Goan rated players is 30 and this represents an increase of almost a 100 percent from the initial figure inherited a year ago.

Among the active players, Bhakti Kulkarni tops with a rating of 2106 helped by her stupendous performance in the Commonwealth Chess Championship in Mumbai where she bagged the Gold medal in the Under 18 Girls section and also posted a rating performance of 2328 - http://fide.com/ratings/tourarc.phtml?codt=22&field1=5019516.

Among the boys, Anurag Mhamal (1921) seems to be on the way up with a good performace in National Under 11 in Chennai where his rating increased 33 points. He will gain further in the April list thanks to his results in Rochess, Sangli and the Parsvanath tournament in New Delhi. He is presently being coached by Akash Thakur.