Commonwealth Chess Championship | Abhijeet Gupta records win; A Chithambaram, M. S. Thej end as leaders

07/02/2019

Top seed in the Commonwealth Chess Championship, Abhijeet Gupta defeated the country’s oldest Grandmaster Pravin Thispay in a high-intensity encounter to create a record. In other matches, national champion and third-seeded Aravindh Chithambaram and 13th seed M. S. Thej Kumar ended as leaders.

Gupta’s win saw the player have a 35-move triumph in Sicilian, which turned out to be a clinical move. His match against Thispay had very little margin for error and would have gone to the player with a calmer head.

And that was Gupta, who wasted no time in capturing one of white’s central-pawn in only on the 19th move to have an early edge. After the queen-side was more or less sorted, Gupta went on the offensive pressing Thispay to take the risk that gave him Gupta the decisive advantage before the older opponent gave up.

Aravindh was against S. Nitin on the second board and was bale come up with a masterful finish. He was always the aggressive one and employed a Sicilian defence that helped Aravindh to post his knight on a strategic square parallel with the castled white king of the opponent. He then followed it up with a classy checkmate with a rook-blow.

Among the ones who were overnight leaders, R. Vaishali held seventh-seeded Arjun Erigaisi in a 67-move battle, which was the biggest surprise of the day. Fourth seed M. R. Lalit Babu, however, trailed the leaders by half a point and ended up as the highest seed to split the point after facing Bhakti Kulkarni.

The results (third round)

Pravin Thipsay (2) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (3); S. Nitin (2) lost to Aravindh Chithambaram (3); R. Vaishali (2.5) drew with Arjun Erigaisi (2.5); Swapnil Dhopade (2.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (2.5); Rahul Sangma (M. S. Thej Kumar (3); P. Karthikeyan (2.5) drew with L. R. Srihari (2.5); Ajay Karthikeyan (2.5) drew with R. R. Laxman (2.5) V. Varshini (2) lost to C. R. G. Krishna (2.5); M. R. Lalit Babu (2) drew with Bhakti Kulkarni (2).