Abhijeet Gupta clinched his maiden title in the National Premier Chess Championship, organised by Marathwada Chess Association at MIT, Aurangabad today. He remained unbeaten collecting 9.5 points from 13 rounds, half a point ahead of the runner up Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu.
After exchanging the queens on 29th move in a Queens Gambit declined game, Negi won the exchange on 34th move. But, there was nothing to cheer about on the board. At move 41, Abhijeet secured the draw he needed to be crowned as champion. Deepan, also remaining unbeaten, split the point with Vidit Santosh Gujrathi to earn the deserving runner up spot.
Under time pressure, former national under 17 champion P. Shyam Nikhil of Tamil Nadu missed a few winning chances to allow his team mate escape with a draw. The result enabled Sethuraman to finish third and pushed Shyam to seventh place.
MR Venkatesh of PSPB defeated his team mate Arun Prasad in a Benoni defence. In a queen and rook ending, Venkatesh had an extra passer pawn, sufficient to bring victory to him in 41 moves. Though Vidit and Venkatesh tied with Sethu, scoring 8.5 points, Venkatesh was placed fourth, ahead of Vidit, due to the difference in tiebreak.
Top six - Vidit, Venkatesh, Abhijeet, Deepan, Sethu, Gopal
In a queen and pawns ending of an English opening, GM Adhiban and Gopal tried to exploit the opponent’s weakness and none could succeed. They signed the peace treaty after 48 moves. With 8 points, Gopal just managed to put himself in the sixth position, the final place for the next year’s direct seeding.
Former champion Abhijit Kunte of PSPB and former under 12 world champion Deep Sengupta were involved in a long drawn battle in a Kings Indian game. The queen and rook of Kunte had a better combination than the queen and knight of Deep, with each having three connected pawns on the king side. Though Kunte penetrated into the opponent’s camp and grabbed one of Deep’s pawns, he could not proceed further and the game ended in a draw, pushing both out of contention.
R. Anantharam, International Arbiter
Final standings:
1 GM Gupta Abhijeet 2625 – 9.5
2 GM Deepan Chakkravarthy J 2470 – 9
3 GM Sethuraman S P 2529 – 8.5
4 IM Venkatesh M R 2479 – 8.5
5 IM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi 2508 – 8.5
6 GM Gopal G N 2572 – 8
7 IM Shyam Nikil P 2418 – 8
8 GM Kunte Abhijit 2528 – 8
9 GM Sengupta Deep 2572 – 8
10 GM Bakre Tejas 2507 – 7.5
11 GM Arun Prasad S 2522 – 7.5
12 GM Negi Parimarjan 2631 – 7.5
13 GM Adhiban B 2551 – 7.5
14 GM Thipsay Praveen M 2433 – 7.5
15 GM Sundararajan Kidambi 2474 – 7.5
16 IM Kulkarni Vikramaditya 2449 – 7.5
17 WGM Padmini Rout 2356 – 7
18 IM Ashwin Jayaram 2473 – 7
19 IM Shyam Sundar M 2457 – 7
20 IM Satyapragyan Swayangsu 2415 – 7
21 G Akash 2239 – 7
22 GM Neelotpal Das 2458 – 7
23 IM Murali Krishnan B T 2366 – 7
24 GM Sriram Jha 2410 – 6.5
25 FM Girish A Koushik 2379 – 6.5
26 IM Swapnil S Dhopade 2411 – 6.5
27 IM Karthikeyan P 2408 – 6.5
28 IM Lalith Babu M R 2495 – 6.5
29 IM Babu N Sudhakar 2319 – 6.5
30 IM Saptarshi Roy 2385 – 6
31 GM Laxman R R 2451 – 6
32 IM Suvrajit Saha 2384 – 6
33 Krishna C R G 2317 – 6
34 IM Rathnakaran K 2386 – 5.5
35 FM Ghosh Diptayan 2288 – 5.5
36 Shashikant Kutwal 2300 – 5.5
37 IM Narayanan Srinath 2336 – 5.5
38 IM Himanshu Sharma 2421 – 5.5
39 IM Sharma Dinesh K 2361 – 5.5
40 IM Koshy Varugeese 2279 – 5
41 Udeshi Aditya 2379 – 5
42 IM Konguvel Ponnuswamy 2384 – 4.5
43 WGM Swathi Ghate 2278 – 4.5
44 IM Deshmukh Anup 2312 – 4.5
45 IM Sangma Rahul 2385 – 4.5
46 WGM Soumya Swaminathan 2318 – 4.5
47 Ravi Teja S 2300 – 4.5
48 Tiwari Arjun 2324 – 4.5
49 IM Lahiri Atanu 2361 – 1
