For a quick tour please visit this, a website created by me! Eversince my neighbour taught me how to play chess, I have been crazy about it. I used to play so much chess that I used to get a strange kind of pleasure out of it, like the feel you get when you eat a tasty ice cream. I used to call my neighbour to play chess with me every weekend. I think I have been a pain in the ass for him. whenever he refuses to play with me, I used to set up the board and play a game all alone. That gets boring eventually as I know all the plans my so called "opponent" is making.

So we used to play school level tournaments. We started to see bigshots and crazy chess players whose life itself is chess! They all had professional chess coaches. So we thought we will go for coaching. So somehow we met Prashant. He's a pharmacist. He has his own medical store. Though he had no time to manage his store, he used to teach us chess 4 hours a week. He had this place next to a temple. It's a single room with summer camp kind of set up for KG kids. We used to sit on the floor and practice chess. There were like 6 of us who were getting trained.

I became a pro after that. He gave me a middle game chess-book, which I read day and night. I was so into the book that I used to use the tricks in it just to show off around my friends. I used to sacrifice queen sometimes if it's a obvious win. They used to think I'm a GM already.

I did win a lot of school level, district level tournaments. I missed a chance to represent my state in one game. My opponent tricked me into taking a Rook pawn and trapped my Bishop. I regret that point of my life. I may have seen many great people if I had won that game.

When I was doing my engineering degree, I became the captain of our college chess team. I conducted tournaments to select players. I did find some real good players. We won 4th place among all the VTU affliated colleges. We were the only team to beat the winners. But luck wasn't with us that day.

Then I joined Cognizant Technology Solutions. There I met this girl who had a potential of beating Koneru Hampi. She became my best bud and we got along very well. I had lost all my chess skills by then. So once she left to USA she started online coaching there. Eventually she got a job in Arizona as a coach for chess emporium which taught some 9 schools. So she was doing well, she had no time to manage her job as well as online coaching. So she gave me an opportunity to teach kids. Initially I was nervous but then she made me teach her cousins and relatives. I got some confidence by that and went on teaching some more kids.

This is a great way to make money, if you are willing to give up some sleep. We teach kids in USA and get payed in dollars. So this is a good way to earn as a part-time job. So that's when I chose to be a coach. Not just for the money but for the fact that I get to play chess again with little kids. Making them a master would be the greatest thing that can happen to any coach. I enjoy coaching kids, make the classes interactive as possible.