National Junior Chess c'ship: Koustav, Neelash, Utsab, Ayush ahead; Priyanka, Bhagyashree lead among girls

Koustav, seeded four, accounted for Tamil Nadu’s duo of S. Rohith Krishna and N. B. Madhavan while 10th seed and fifth-round leader Utsab stunned fifth seed and recently-crowned National sub-junior champion M. Pranesh before drawing with his Tamil Nadu teammate G. B. Harshavardhan.

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE: In the girls’ section, top seed N. Priyanka and third seed Bhagyashree Patil won both their rounds to move ahead at 5.5 points.

It turned out to be a day of the Bengal boys as Koustav Chatterjee, Neelash Saha, Utsab Chatterjee along with Madhya Pradesh’s Ayush Sharma shared the lead at 5.5 points in the open section after six rounds of the National junior chess championship here on Friday.

Koustav, seeded four, accounted for Tamil Nadu’s duo of S. Rohith Krishna and N. B. Madhavan while 10th seed and fifth-round leader Utsab stunned fifth seed and recently-crowned National sub-junior champion M. Pranesh before drawing with his Tamil Nadu teammate G. B. Harshavardhan.

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Saha, seeded six, scored over Vaibhav Raut (Maharashtra) and Aaryan Varshney (Delhi) while Ayush drew with Hari Madhvan (TN) and beat Soham Bhattacharya (Bengal).

In the girls’ section, top seed N. Priyanka and third seed Bhagyashree Patil won both their rounds to move ahead at 5.5 points. Priyanka defeated two overnight leaders, Tamil Nadu’s M. Divyabharathi and C. Lakshmi while Bhagyashree faced lesser-rated players like Arushi Kotwal (J&K) and Tanishka Kotia (Haryana).