On February 28 and March 1, the Chess Team ventured to a Chess tournament hosted by the Union County Vocational Schools of Technology in Paramus and Raritan. Vivek Ravinutala, the president of the Chess Team, was a part of the NJ JV State Championship—an event hosting other teams such as varsity and teams with younger attendance.
Ravinutala started learning Chess in around the First Grade, through the guidance of his parents, and practiced a lot on online applications such as lichess.org. He’s traveled across the country to attend tournaments, such as to State and National Qualifiers in Las Vegas, the NJ Grade Championship in November, and events in Philadelphia in the months of January and July. To help his team members prepare for these tournaments, he organizes puzzles online for them to solve and hosts one-on-one tutoring sessions.
In preparation for the tournament, he prepared a detailed opening during his second round’s tournament, until he learned that it had an entirely different opening. Fortunately, the member of the other team had a smaller oversight, allowing him to play his favorable move.
Typically in games, he follows the King Zidian defense against every single first move he plays, except one first move. If you push the king’s horn two spaces, you get the Sicilian defense as well. Almost every single game, he plays in black.
During tournaments he embodies a mindset that highlights the thought that, in his own words, “If I win, I win. If I lose, I lose. It’s not really the end of the world, regardless. That’s why it’s never really been a pressure to me. It’s like, kind of like, oh yeah, everyone has a right to figure out what’s the best route I can do. But it’s up to me to decide what move I take.” Ravinutala explains.
Typically, he tries to get most of his academic work “out of the way” before attending extracurricular activities, clubs, and chess as well.
“Chess has really taught me to slow down, take your time, and really think towards not only the next step, but something that could occur further down the line. For example, in tests and all, I used to just write down the first thing that comes to mind–just for some of my tests.” Ravintuala smiles, “But now, while studying, I realized that you can slow down and do significantly better.”
Bobby Fisher’s humble origins and raw intelligence, in addition to Viswanathan Anand’s place as the World Champion in India for almost twenty years at this point, making India a “hot spot” for youngsters to play Chess there, inspire Ravintula to persevere.
For up-and-coming Chess players, Ravintula encourages people to see free online resources to study chess, as in his eyes, it has dramatically increased since he was younger. When he started Chess, back in 2014 and 2016, there were not a lot of sources of information online available, in his opinion. This generation, he argues, has so many more resources to develop their skills.
“Hopefully, I’ll become a national or international of Chess one day, whether it be in High School or College. Let’s see what senior year brings for me. I hope to be a national master by then.” Ravinutala says.