This Delhi teenager’s big chess ambitions include teaching the game to blind children.

Through her Project Checkmate, Devanshi Rathi hopes to coach more students

I was hyperactive as a child, so my mother enrolled me for chess so I could put my energy into something constructive.” Devanshi Rathi says this calmly, not even cracking a smile. It is difficult to picture this quiet 18-year-old who speaks in measured tones and responds thoughtfully to every question as a rambunctious child. She was eight then, she says, and chess was popular in school.

She learnt the basics with the school coach, and did well in tournaments. A year later, the coach recommended she train with an international-level teacher. Her family retained the services of International Master Vishal Sareen and she progressed rapidly, representing her school in team and open events, then in Delhi State tournaments, and quickly from there to rated championships.
 

By 2010, she was playing ratings championships in Asian age-group events. “In 2015, I played in the Commonwealth, and again in 2016, when I won a bronze in the under-18 girls’.” She delivers this information only in passing; she’s keen to talk about something else.

When Rathi was 14, in a tough grandmaster tournament in Delhi, she played against a visually-challenged boy, and lost. “It was an eye-opener for me,” she says, conscious of her choice of words. She knew what chess had done for her, and she now knew it had opened doors for this lad; so why couldn’t it help other youngsters like him?
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/this-delhi-teenagers-big-chess-ambitions-include-teaching-the-game-to-blind-children/article25194888.ece