National Chess Championship 2024: Usual script continues as Surya Sekhar, Abhijeet, Sethuraman post wins

Top seed Surya Sekhar Ganguly, from the white side of a Sicilian Defence, saw his much younger rival Sidhanth Poonja keep playing on from a virtually hopeless position.

Abhijeet Gupta (right) against Harshit Singh in the second round of the National chess championship at Gurugram. | Photo Credit: P.K. Ajith Kumar

The second day was a seamless continuation of the first. Nothing unusual happened on the top boards in the second round of the 61st National Chess Championship.

The only excitement came during the live-streaming due to some technical glitch, because of which some unlikely results seemed possible on the top boards. But that, too, was rectified: so, even the boards online said the top four seeds -- Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, S.P. Sethuraman and Diptayan Ghosh -- posted wins.

Ganguly, from the white side of a Sicilian Defence, saw his much younger rival Sidhanth Poonja keep playing on from a virtually hopeless position. Black waited till he was checkmated by two queens on the 65th move.

On the second board, too, it was Sicilian Defence, but it was an easy win for Black. Abhijeet won against Harshit Singh in 51 moves, though in a less spectacular style.

On the third board, Sethuraman, who opted for an English Opening, punished Esshan Wadhawan for a couple of early weak bishop moves, on his way to a 28-move victory.

Important results (second round)

Surya Shekhar Ganguly (PSPB) 2 bt Siddhanth Poonja (Kar) 1; Harshit Singh (UP) 1 lost to Abhijeet Gupta (PSPB) 2; S.P. Sethuraman (PSPB) 2 bt Esshan Wadhawan (Del) 1; Kishan Kumar (Bih) 1 lost to Diptayan Ghosh (RSPB) 2; Karthik Venkataraman (AP) 2 bt Yohan Yadav (Tel) 1; Abhinav Raj (Del) 1 lost to P. Iniyan (TN) 2; Sankalp Gupta (Mah) 2 bt K.K. Chatterjee (Ben) 1; Subhrajit Dey (Ben) 1 lost to Mitrabha Guha (RSPB) 2; Aronyak Ghosh (RSPB) 2 bt Nimay Agrawal (Har) 1; S. Saisarvesh (TN) 1 lost to N.R. Vignesh (RSPB) 2; N.R. Visakh (RSPB) 2 bt Idu Sheikh (Cht) 1; Arnav Agrawal (UP) 1 lost to Deep Sengupta (PSPB) 2; Atharv Soni (Mah) 1 lost to M.R. Lalith Babu (AP) 2; Sayantan Das (RSPB) 2 bt Ayaan Garg (Chd) 1; Prithvi Sharma (Har) 1 lost to Neelash Saha (RSPB) 2.