2025 India College Chess Championship Autumn Season Begins!
The 2025 India College Chess Championship Autumn (ICCC) began on August 14, 2025, with 240 teams featuring more than 1,200 players across 30 divisions. BITS Pilani Hyderabad (Martial Knights) is leading with perfect scores after two rounds.
Standings after two rounds | Division 1
* The standings reflect the current status. Some matches between colleges are yet to be played.
The India College Chess Championship is an event exclusively for college students in India. The autumn event's regular season runs from August 14 to September 25, while the Playoffs run from October 2 to October 16.
Teams will compete in a seven-week round-robin of all-play-all matches. The top six teams will progress to the playoffs and compete for their share of the $15,000 prize fund. Teams SRM, SRCC, VIT Vellore, and Jadavpur are also part of this season. Interestingly, Jeppiaar University isn't competing in the event despite securing second in the last season.
Team SRM Institute of Technology and Science dominated the first and the second seasons, winning all their matches! 
Their line-up for the third season is also strong, featuring GM Pranesh M, GM Srihari L R, IMs Harsh Suresh, Srihari L, Raahul V S, and Mohamed A. The team is yet to play another match to complete the round. Now, let's take a look at some of the interesting games played so far in this season:
Winning positions are winning, but that's not a full point yet. Here is an example of how a winning position can just slip away if one is not careful:
The next position has a puzzle and it is to see if you are alert to opportunities. What did White find?
One of the shortest games so far had a nice puzzle. Can you find the win?
I was reminded of the famous quote by GM Savielly Tartakower, "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake" while going through this ending. Sriram Udhayakumar from BITS Pilani Hyderabad played a very exciting endgame that had many critical moments. Here's a chance for you to find out how he missed a huge win after a seemingly innocuous move by White. Go through the entire endgame—it is interesting as he eventually won the game!
Now, time for the longest game of the season so far. Captain of the BITS Pilani Hyderabad team, Harinandha, was very close to securing a draw in a topsy-turvy game against Anirudh Narendran of Vellore Institute of Technology. The unique part about chess is that one move may just spoil all the hard work of the past moves. Harinandha had a good chance to draw the game but went wrong. Take a look:
Let's wrap up the set with a cute puzzle. Can you find the immediate way to win as Black?
Standings after two rounds | Division 2
Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta are leading Division 2 with perfect scores. In Division 3, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Knightmare) and PSG College of Arts and Science are leading with 2/2.
Standings after two rounds | Division 3
The battle for the top prizes will continue, and we will bring you updates on the next set of rounds soon. You can go to the event page to follow all the games, results, playing schedule, and more.
The India College Chess Championship is the premier online chess competition for college students in India. It is a team event starting August 14, 2025, and featuring a $15,000 prize fund.
