Praful Zaveri

The Man behind the Movement.

THE FOUNDER

  • Praful Zaveri is the founder of Indian Chess School. In a highly decorated career span of over 3-decades, he has trained more than 5000 students, empowered 100+ trainers to teach chess and has introduced chess in more than 10-schools across Mumbai.

  • His experience and expertise cover coaching, giving seminars, organizing tournaments, officiating as arbiter writing chess books among a myriad of other facets of chess.

THE DRIVING FORCE

Among the countless winners, he has produced at various level of chess tournaments, the achievements of the following students are noteworthy:

Ridit Nimdia: 3rd place for a Bronze Medal World Schools Chess Championship, 2009, Turkey
Joint 2nd place at Dubai Junior, 2014

Soham Palkar: Joint 4th pace at Dubai Junior 2014

Alaina Vincent : 7th place at World Schools Championship, 2015 Turkey

THE AUTHOR

  • Praful Zaveri has authored 8-training manuals, which includes the best-seller - ‘The Chess Course’ (1999). This book has sold more than 1,00,000 copies.

  • He authored ‘Mastermind Chess’ in the year 2018 and the 6-volumes ‘The Chess Course, a Curriculum’ (2013 to 2021) which is widely used across the world to train children.

THE ORGANISER

Praful Zaveri is noted for his organisational skills and successfully organized 5 International Grandmasters Tournaments, 50+ FIDE rating tournaments and 200+ tournaments at the school, district, state & national level chess tournaments.

He has put Mumbai and India on the world chess map by organizing ‘360 ONE Wealth (formerly, IIFL Wealth) International Chess Tournament’ from 2015 onwards. This event also incorporates ‘Mumbai Junior (Under-13) Chess Tournament, which is billed as the ‘World’s Richest Event for Children’. The multiple world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand is the Patron of this event.

He was also the member of the organising team for the 44th World Chess Olympiad held at Chennai from 28 July to 10 August 2022.

In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the title of ‘FIDE International Organizer’ (FIO) in the year 2021.

THE ENVOY

Praful Zaveri has shared his expertise and experience at the following international chess conventions:

  • FIDE Trainers’ Seminar, Botswana, 2008.

  • FIDE Trainers’ Seminar, Chennai, 2009.

  • International Chess-in-Schools Seminar at Armenia in 2016.

  • ‘Training the Trainers’ program, Goa, 2018 & 2019.

  • International Chess-in-Schools Seminar at New Delhi in 2019.

THE AWARDS

Praful Zaveri has been awarded the following FIDE titles in recognition of his achievements in the field of training, arbitering and organising chess tournaments:

FIDE Instructor (FI) in 2007

FIDE Arbiter (FA) in 2018

FIDE Trainer (FT) in 2020

FIDE International Organizer (FIO) in 2021

FIDE International Arbiter (IA) in 2023

He is the 1st Indian to be awarded the title of FIDE Instructor and also the first to be awarded all the 3-titles of trainer, arbiter and organizer.

THE TEACHER

Praful Zaveri was nominated as the ‘Coach’ of the Indian chess team at the following international tournaments:

  • Asian Schools Chess Championship, Taiwan, 2014

  • World Schools Chess Championship, Thailand, 2015

  • Asian Youth Chess Championship, South Korea, 2015

  • World Cadets Chess Championship, Brazil, 2017

  • Abu Dhabi International Chess Tournament, 2019