Kurunegala Major Champion 2020 Maheesha Dabarera

9 May 2020

Maheesha was born on January 10^th, 2004, and started chess from Grade 2. He is from Maliyadeva College, Kurunegala same as Sri Lanka’s No.1 IM Harshana Thilakarathne.

Maheesha was fortunate to get the training from Mr. Nuwan Liyanage who is one of the best local chess coaches and Grandmaster Dimitry Komorov who is one of the world's top-level chess trainers. The opportunities opened by the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka for the young local talents are remarkable and Maheesha is thankful to CFSL for opening doors for them to excel in Sri Lanka Chess.

Maheesha became Under 14 National Youth Chess Champion in 2018, Under 15 Chess Champion-in Sri Lanka Schools Chess Association Youth Finals-2019, and also he is the 1^st Runner-up of Under 16 National Youth Chess Championship 2020.

Same as most of the young top players in Sri Lanka he is performing in school studies and achieved 8As and 1B in O/L 2019.

He loves more the games of former world champions, Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. Maheesha says the videos of Grandmaster Daniel King are one of the best sources that motivated him to play good chess in addition to the shelter of his coaches.

Increasing 150+ rating points in World Youth 2018 has made him more confident to accelerate the rate of progress in chess.

Maheesha says - Everyone has ups and downs in his life. This is the same for chess players. We have to believe-"we learn little from victory much from defeat" than worrying too much about our losses.

His advice for the chess kids is ‘Play for a win, play active chess’, and he has proven it already in his chess career, and if you look at the rating list of the Sri Lankan active players with their birth years, Maheesha is one of our big hope.

Here is just one of his games for you to enjoy. The opponent is also one of the young leading players in Sri Lanka Chess- Kevin Silva.

By Marlon Fernando