Future Hope students with Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua

The boys of Future Hope School started playing chess just 15 months ago but today a third of the school plays the brain game. Five students have already become players rated by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, prompting the school to organise its own inter-school competition.

On Sunday, several top Calcutta schools, including St. Xavier’s Collegiate School, La Martiniere for Boys, St. Lawrence High School and Don Bosco School, Park Circus, will participate in the Inter-School Team Chess Championship, in association with TTIS, powered by The Telegraph. The one-day event will take place at Modern High School for Girls, which will also field a team.

“St. Xavier’s probably has the best team but we hope to give them and the other schools with better-rated players a good run for their money,” said Sayan Mukerji, the founder of the Future Hope Chess Academy and the brain behind the tournament.

South Point, regarded as having the best school chess team in the city, are not participating “to keep the competition even” but the organisers said a match between South Point and the winners of Sunday’s tournament would be organised at a later date.

Each school will field a four-member team. Each team will play five rounds, in each of which the four members will take on one player from the other school.

“After each round, points would be calculated and teams with similar points will take each other on,” said Mukerji.

The guests of honour at the event will be Patrick Derham, the headmaster of Rugby School in England, and his wife Alison. Rugby School supports Future Hope School by providing advice on governance, teaching and training.

Bipin Shenoy, who takes two chess classes a week at Future Hope, thinks that the “home school”, which is fielding two teams, has a good chance of pulling off a surprise. “Future Hope has a player called Basant Kumar Das, who calculates very deeply before each move, never making one on impulse. I expect him to do well in the tournament. The other players also have plus points,” said Shenoy, who also coaches other Calcutta schools but finds boys of Future Hope “more passionate” about the game.

The real success of the school has, however, been that as many as 80 of the 200-odd boys and girls in the school have joined the chess academy. Initially, the greenhorns are encouraged to play with carefree abandon but they soon become “attentive and intuitive”, said Mukerji, adding that the serious students also train at the Barua Chess Academy on Fridays.

The students of Future Hope have, however, got continuous encouragement to keep their spirits alive. They had played a few friendly boards with former England cricketer Ian Botham who had visited the school during an intra-school tournament in March 2011. “Beefy”, as the former all-rounder is known, was so impressed that he brought the entire current England team to the school when they were in Calcutta to play an ODI and a T20 tie in November.

The boys had given a good account of themselves when pitted against Rohan Bopanna and Kevin Peitersen, who are known as “serious” chess players.