Siddhant Gawai, who drew with Abhijeet Gupta at the National Chess Championship in Gurugram | Photo credit: PK Ajith Kumar
Gender may be a hot topic in sports right now, but chess knows no gender.
Two of the top three boards in the third round of the 61st National Championship featured female players at the RPS International School on Monday. Shubhi Gupta and Kiran Manisha Mohanty fought hard against number one seed Surya Shekhar Ganguly and defending champion SP Sethuraman respectively, but both had to concede the point.
Siddhant Gawai, however, managed to take half a point from second seed Abhijeet Gupta. The 17-year-old from Nagpur was understandably overjoyed to earn a draw against his far more experienced rival.
“This is my best result in chess,” he said after their match ended in 67 moves, with Abhijeet, playing English Opening, giving perpetual check. Gawai’s Elo rating of 2057 points is 526 points lower than his rival’s.
However, Abhijieet was not the only grandmaster to score a draw. Brothers NR Vignesh and NR Visakh were stopped by Arshpreet Singh and Sai Santosh Gyana respectively. Pratyaksh Goel and Soumick Bandopadhyay signed peace with their grandmaster opponents J. Deepan Chakravarthy and Sriram Jha respectively.
With eight rounds to go, 24 players share the lead with three points.
Key results (third round):
Shubhi Gupta (UP) 2 lost to Surya Shekhar Ganguly (PSPB) 3; Abhijeet Gupta (PSPB) 2.5 draw vs Siddhant Gawai (Mah) 2.5; Kiran Manisha Mohanty (LIC) 2 lost to SP Sethuraman (PSPB); Diptayan Ghosh (RSPB) 3 bt Madhvendra Sharma (MP); Alluri Bhaskara Reddy (AP) 2 lost to Karthik Venkataraman (AP) 3; P. Iniyan (TN) 3 bt Jval Patel (Guj) 2; Harshit Sahu (Odi) 2 lost to Sankalp Gupta (Mah) 3; Mitrabha Guha (RSPB) 3 bt Jyotshnav Talukdar (Odi) 2; Aadik Lenin (Ker) 2, lost to Aronyak Ghosh (RSPB) 3; NR Vignesh (RSPB) 2.5 draw vs Arshpreet Singh (Har) 2.5; Sai Santosh Gyana (AP) 2.5 draw vs NR Visakh (RSPB) 2.5; Deep Sengupta (PSPB) 3 bt Kheerthi Ganta (Tel) 2; MR Lalith Babu (AP) 3 bt Tanmay Rajbongshi (Asm) 2; Prathamesh Sharla (Mah) 2 lost to Sayantan Das (RSPB) 3; Neelash Saha (RSPB) 3 vs Roshan Sivan (TN) 2.
