The BOSM English Press sat down with Shreyas Panyam, the Captain of the BITS Pilani Chess Team, for a quick chat regarding the upcoming sports fest.

Shreyas learned to play chess from his older brother when he was very young and has been playing it since. He has played in numerous inter-school tournaments and has also played at the district level.

In BOSM, chess will be played in the Classical and Blitz formats. In Classical chess, each player starts with an hour on their timer along with a 30 second increment per move. Meanwhile, Blitz is a much faster game format with three minutes per side along with a two second increment per move. The teams will be split into pools, and the tournament will be structured in a way to ensure that each team plays at least two matches.

Currently, the team has twelve players, all of whom except the captain will be playing in BOSM. Shreyas explained that he has decided to sit this BOSM out to let the juniors gain experience of playing in BOSM as there were limited spots on the playing team. Speaking on the ELO ratings, a system used to measure the relative skill level in chess among other sports, Shreyas mentioned that most of the team was in the 1500-1900 range but that there were a few unrated players as well. When asked about the team’s training regimen, Shreyas said they practise together every day for roughly three hours, which involves solving puzzles and playing against each other. 

On the topic of the team’s performance in recent tournaments and the previous editions of BOSM, Shreyas mentioned that they had secured the second and third positions in BOSM ’19. He further explained that COVID-19 had caused a year-long gap with no outstation tournaments held, and in the previous semester, they were not able to participate in any outstation events owing to some internal factors. Talking about the competition, Shreyas explained that a lot of different colleges apply for the tournament, so the competition varies each time. SRCC, Sri Venkateswara College, and the other BITS campuses are regular participants in the chess tournaments in BOSM.

Talking about his experience as team captain, Shreyas mentioned that he had been captain for a year now, during which he had worked for BITS Premier League (BPL). ‘It was pretty hectic to manage along with the COVID stuff, but in the end, I thought it ended up being a pretty decent experience,’ Shreyas noted. He added that it had been very convenient and easy to communicate with the CoSSAc and the institute, and the only issue he was facing was with inventory, which he hoped would arrive before the fest. Opining on their chances this BOSM, he stated that he was very confident about placing in the top three and also thought that their chances of winning were quite good.