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    On the south-eastern coast of India there is situated a city known by its chess traditions – Chennai. Have you doubt? Then you should know that until 1996 the city had another name – Madras. It is place of birth of Viswi Anand, Krishnan Sasikiran and many other grandmasters.

   It’s amazing that no one knows exact number of its population. According to Wikipedia  there lives less then 5mln people. But more likely seems the number which Indians tell themselves: 6-8mln people (they can’t be more precise).

  But let us come back to chess.  From 25^th January to 3^rd February they hold international tournament “Chennai Open”. 11 rounds on Swiss system with more than 400 participants. All were satisfied with organization of event, there were no complains. Russian Grandmaster Maksim Turov, who after blissful start (8,5 points out of 9!) made 2 last draws to secure his victory in open.

Concerning me, having had also a good start (6 out of 7) I suddenly lost 2 games in row (in the second one was too eager to win) and drop off from fight for prize places.

And for the end several interesting facts:

• The highest temperature in Chennai in June: +36 °C, the lowest in January +24 °C
• Top rating of tournament Ghaem Maghami who before won the tournament in Dehli was going to leave India, but organizers changed his plans and he participated in Chennai.
• All foreign participants had  “chess tournament» on their visas as a purpose of visit. Grandmaster from Uzbekistan Marat Dzhumaev got another note – “cheese tournament”, what led to some confusion by customs officers in airport.