National Kindergarten CHESS Champion Arun Khemani
SAM RAO  Exclusive

Fremont, CA: 5 year old Arun Khemani’s legs dangle in the air as he sits at the table, and he can barely reach over to move his chess pieces but don’t make any mistake, as he will pounce and finish the match in a jiffy.

Meet Arun Khemani, who won two significant Chess titles in the month of December this year. Khemani was crowned as the Kindergarten champion at both the CalChess Grade Level chess Championship in Stockton, California on December 6th and added the prestigious National K-12 Chess Championship in Orlando, Florida on December 14th as well.

At the championships, Arun bounced back from a first round loss with six wins to bring Bay Area a National Championship!" In the last round, Arun defeated the top seed, Awonder Liang from Wisconsin, in a battle between two 1000+ rated 5 year olds.The other top winner at the Lake Buena Vista, Florida National K-12 Championships, was Kyle Shin (1st 5th grade).

Parents Gul and Kiran are very proud as is Arun’s coach Ted Castro, as in spite of difficult competition, two of his stars won 1st place trophies at the championship and the rest of the team had pretty good success too.

While many from the SF Bay area had creditable finishes, some included
Samuel Sevian (#1 age 7), Tanuj Vasudeva (#5 age 7) NM Nicholas Nip (#1 age 10)
Yian Liou (#3 age 11), FM Daniel Naroditsky (#1 age 12) and Vignesh Panchanatham (#8 age 8) , while  Armaan Kalyanpur, Kesav Viswanadha, Rohan Agarwal, Adarsh Konda dinished in the top 25 in their age groups.

Kiran, Arun's mom first  introduced him to the game and soon Arun asked for a chess set for his 5th birthday. His father Gul then taught him further with help of ChessMaster software and as he progressed rapidly, Arun joined some chess clubs and after school programs.

“Arun now has an excellent chess coach Ted Castro and otherwise enjoys playing with friends and also Basketball, Soccer, Board games, Computer Games, His success has already started influencing his classmates at the Stockelmeir Elementary school,’ says dad Gul Khemani. Some of his other clubs that he participates regularly include Intel Chess Club, also his first chess club, Newark Chess Club, BayAreaChess forum.  With a strong immigrant presence in the SF Bay area, Chess remains popular and several clubs and after school programs abound.

Arun has his own heroes in life as well, and yes, World Champions and International Grad Masters Vishwanathan Anand and Garry Kasparov  figure high in his list.

Already, the Khemani’s are grooming Arun’s  brother Neel, who at 2 years can name all the chess