GD Goenka School, Srinagar student Naisha Han­doo Wins U-10 Gold at 6th Kash­mir Inter­na­tional Open Chess Tour­na­ment

Young chess player Naisha Han­doo student of GD Goenka School, Srinagar clinched the gold medal in the Under-10 cat­egory at the 6th Kash­mir Inter­na­tional Open FIDE Rapid Rat­ing Chess Tour­na­ment 2026, con­cluded at the Indoor Sports Com­plex, Polo Ground, Srin­agar, on Sat­urday.

Com­pet­ing in an open Fide-rated tour­na­ment fea­tur­ing play­ers across dif­fer­ent age groups and exper­i­ence levels, Naisha fin­ished the nine-round com­pet­i­tion with four points, secur­ing the top pos­i­tion in her Under-10 cat­egory.

Naisha had a chal­len­ging start to the tour­na­ment, los­ing her open­ing two encoun­ters. However, she staged an impress­ive comeback by win­ning three con­sec­ut­ive matches in Rounds 3, 4 and 5, tak­ing her tally to three points at the halfway stage.

In the remain­ing four rounds on the con­clud­ing day, Naisha added another vic­tory to fin­ish the tour­na­ment with four points from nine rounds and claim the U-10 gold medal.

Her per­form­ance was par­tic­u­larly note­worthy as the tour­na­ment was not restric­ted to chil­dren or agegroup play­ers. It was an open com­pet­i­tion in which young par­ti­cipants were paired against play­ers of vary­ing ages and rat­ings under the Swiss sys­tem. Dur­ing the tour­na­ment, Naisha also had the oppor­tun­ity to com­pete against exper­i­enced Fide-rated play­ers.

In the open­ing round, the young player was paired against Salil Kumar D. of Ker­ala, rated 1832, giv­ing her valu­able expos­ure against a sig­ni­fic­antly more exper­i­enced oppon­ent. As her score improved dur­ing the com­pet­i­tion, she con­tin­ued to face increas­ingly com­pet­it­ive oppos­i­tion.

Naisha entered the Kash­mir tour­na­ment fol­low­ing a string of encour­aging per­form­ances in recent chess com­pet­i­tions. Her latest U10 gold adds another achieve­ment to her grow­ing record and marks an import­ant step in her com­pet­it­ive chess jour­ney.

The 6th Kash­mir Inter­na­tional Open FIDE Rapid Rat­ing Chess Tour­na­ment was played over nine rounds with a rapid time con­trol of 15 minutes plus a five-second incre­ment per move. The two-day tour­na­ment was held on Septem­ber 25 and 26 at Srin­agar.