Integral Coach Factory dominates 35th All India Railway Team Championship 2023
Integral Coach Factory scored an unbeaten 10/12 to win 35th All India Inter Railway Team Chess Championship 2023. ICF defeated the eventual runner-up Eastern Railway convincingly 1-3 in the fourth round. ER scored 9/12 to finish sole second. Metro Railway Kolkata and the defending champion Southern Railway scored 8/12 each. However, Metro edged past SR on tie-breaks to finish third. GM Deepan Chakkravarthy was the top scorer for his team ICF. He scored an unbeaten 5/6. GM Visakh N R and IM P Shyam Nikhil also remained undefeated. They made 4.5/6 and 4/6 each. GM Laxman R R scored a valuable 3.5/5. This is ICF's second triumph in consecutive year. Their previous victory was in January 2022 in the 33rd edition. Photos: Various sources
An encore of 33rd edition
A commonly said phrase - The more things change, the more they stay the same. When one checks the team event standings of the 35th edition, they will find that the top three finishers are exactly the same as the 33rd edition. Integral Coach Factory is the champion, Eastern Railway runner-up and Metro Railway Kolkata second runner-up. Even the top two teams have the exact same score, win, draw and loss count as a team. Only thing different is, this time Metro score 1 match point less. Nevertheless, it did not matter much as Metro still managed to secure third place. Individual event's report will be published in a separate article.
L to R - GM Karthikeyan P, IM P Shyam Nikhil, GM Laxman R R, GM Deepan Chakkravarthy and FA FT Sureshkumar Janardhanan (Manager) with the officials.
L to R - Official, GM Saptarshi Roy, IM Sidhant Mohapatra, IM Arghyadip Das, IM Aronyak Ghosh, IM Suvrajit Saha, Pradip Ghosh and Arindam Mukherjee (Manager).
L to R - Official, IM Somak Palit, IM Sayantan Das and FM Joydeep Datta.
A total of 13 teams inlcuding 8 GMs and 17 IMs represented various railway divisions of Indian Railways across the country in this three-day nine-round Swiss League non-rating team tournament. The event was organized by WCR Sports Association at Railway Stadium Basketball Court in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh from 2nd to 4th Jul 2023. The time control of the event was 90 minutes + 30 seconds increment from move no.1.
Final standings
| Rk. | SNo | Team | Games | + | = | - | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | TB4 | TB5 | |
| 1 | 1 | Integral Coach Factory | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 17 | 231,8 | 43,5 | |
| 2 | 2 | Eastern Railway | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 14,5 | 198 | 36,5 | |
| 3 | 5 | METRO | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 15,5 | 178,5 | 38 | |
| 4 | 3 | Southern Railway | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 14,5 | 200,5 | 37 | |
| 5 | 4 | South Central Railway | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 15 | 174,8 | 37 | |
| 6 | 6 | Western Railway | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 13,5 | 166,8 | 34 | |
| 7 | 9 | South Eastern Railway | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 13 | 107,8 | 32 | |
| 8 | 8 | Northern Railway | 5 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 11,5 | 82,3 | 24 | |
| 9 | 10 | East Coast Railway | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 10 | 57,5 | 21 | |
| 10 | 7 | South Western Railway | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 12 | 109,8 | 23,5 | |
| 11 | 12 | North Western Railway | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 8 | 38 | 15 | |
| 12 | 11 | West Central Railway | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 33,5 | 12 | |
| 13 | 13 | Rail Wheel Factory | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 4,5 | 23,5 | 6,5 |
