Indian chess player Niklesh Jain proposes to his Colombian girlfriend Franco Angela at the Chess Olympics

Niklesh Kumar Jain did not need Google Translate to pronounce these four words. 33 year old man international chess player de Katni in Madhya Pradesh had replayed this scenario in her head dozens of times over several months, and on Tuesday it went exactly as planned.

Jain asked his two-year-old girlfriend the question, Franco Valence Angela, 31, an international female master from Colombia, in Batumi, Georgia.

The scene, according to him, could not have been more perfect: the 2018 Chess-Olympiad” keynameseo=”chess-Olympiad” actualkeyword=”chess Olympiad”>Chess Olympiad, in the company of players from 185 countries – including the best Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, P Harikrishna and Koneru Humpy – a tip of the hat to the game that brought them together. So, on the ground, he knelt barely 10 minutes before Colombia’s second round match. The rest, as modern love stories say, is a viral story. Last night, the proposal’s videos had racked up nearly 4,000 views on YouTube.

Their love story is as unusual as the one the chess world witnessed on Tuesday. The two met at a tournament in Spain a few years ago, where Jain impressed her with her brilliant play against an opponent. They then became friends with the setbacks each suffered during the tournament. “It was not a formal meeting. We had a lot of things in common, visited many places together and gradually bonded, ”said Jain, a 2000 Elo ranked chess player who is in the game. Batumi Olympiad as a journalist and writes for the Hindi section of the Chessbase India portal and some regional publications in Punjab.

Language without bar


Neither cultural nor language barriers – Jain only mastered Hindi and Angela in Spanish – stood in the way of the budding romance. They have used Google Translate to communicate and continue to do so. “Love knows no borders, no religion, no language, no nationality. He’s the greatest communicator, ”Jain said.

Angela, a 2200 player, echoed the sentimentality. “India and Colombia may be different, but we are the same. No world is too far away for those who can love unconditionally, ”she said.

It was only in recent months that the two decided to move their relationship forward. Jain visited Colombia and Angela’s family came to call in Katni, where Jain trained aspiring chess players at an academy for 11 years.

Jain had planned the engagement until the end. He even put Angela’s sister, Beatriz, in confidence when buying the ring. Even though Angela knew that a marriage proposal was imminent – the two had spoken of going to Ali and Nino’s house in Batumi, a moving 7m tall statue depicting the eponymous doomed lovers – never in her wildest dreams did she ‘had thought that the Olympiad hall would serve as a venue for their big day.

indian wedding

“He’s my soul mate and the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. And failures will always be important to us, ”Angela told Mirror through her fiance and performer Jain before rushing to Colombia’s third round match against Wales.

The couple plan to tie the knot in India in December.