National Chess C’Ships: Abhijeet, Koustav share lead after comfortable victories

It was a merry time for Abhijeet Gupta and Koustav Chatterjee following their easier-than-expected victories for a perfect score after four rounds of the National chess championship on Sunday.

Abhijeet Gupta in action. | Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ

It was a merry time for Abhijeet Gupta and Koustav Chatterjee following their easier-than-expected victories for a perfect score after four rounds of the National chess championship here on Sunday.

Abhijeet, a former champion, owed it to the generosity of G. B. Harshavardhan who overlooked the loss of a knight without compensation and resigned in 49 moves. Koustav managed to add a second queen after pushing a queenside pawn to the distance against S. Nitin, who gave up in 43 moves.

The other two games involving the leaders ended as draws. Top seed S. P. Sethuraman and last edition’s third-placed P. Iniyan played out a 60-move draw. Iniyan’s extra pawn could not give him a decisive edge. Vedant Panesar did well to hold Aronyak Ghosh in 22 moves following a three-fold repetition of moves.

Following Abhijeet and Koustav, seeded three and eight, are 10 players at 3.5 points. Another 34 players, including eight Grandmasters, are at three points.

Leading results:

Fourth round: P. Iniyan (3.5) drew with S. P. Sethuraman (3.5); G. B. Harshvardhan (3) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (4); Vedant Panesar (3.5) drew with Aronyak Ghosh (3.5); Koustav Chatterjee (4) bt S. Nitin (3); Utsab Chatterjee (2.5) lost to N. R. Visakh (3.5); Karthik Venkataraman (3) drew with Subhayan Kundu (3); Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (3) drew with P. Shyaamnikhil (3); Mitrabha Guha (3.5) bt Vardaan Nagpal (2.5); P. Karthikeyan (3) drew with Sandipan Chanda (3); Leon Mendonca (3) bt Shreyansh Daklia (2.5); M. Shyam Sundar (3) bt N. Surendran (2); N. R. Vignesh (2.5) drew with J. Akshit Kumar (2.5); M. Srinivasa Rao (2) lost to M. R. Venkatesh (3).