NAGPUR: Having won all the three rounds played so far, city masters
Divya Deshmukh
,
Mrudul Dehankar
and
Narayani Adane
gave an excellent start to their campaign in the 35th
National Chess Championship
in Kolkata on Wednesday.
The national event is being organized by the All India
Chess
Federation (AICF) to pick the Indian contingent for both the open and girls’ group.
At the end of the third round, top seed Divya, No. 3 Mrudul and 13th-ranked Narayani share the top position with five others in the girls’ group of the 11-round nationals.
Maharashtra’s U-15 champion Sankalp Gupta, however, had a false start in the Open group of the meet that attracted 248 players from across the country. After a first-round draw, the second-seeded Sankalp posted victories in the following two rounds to join the top flight and share the second position at the end of third round.
In the girls’ group, city’s first Women International Master (WIM) Divya started with an easy win over state mate Anaidaa Santosh and outclassed Anushka Gupta of West Bengal with her black bits. In the third round, Divya utilized her opening advantage with the white pieces well to get the better of Tamil Nadu’s Divyabharathi Masanam. She will face 12th seed WIM Bommini Mounika Akshaya of Andhra Pradesh in the fourth round on Thursday.
Similarly, third seed Mrudul posted comfortable victories over Maharashtra’s Vaibhavi Palkar, Jesica of Delhi and West Bengal’s Sil Mehendi. She will now square up against joint leader and city mate Narayani in the fourth round.
For Narayani too the initial rounds were easy outings. After scripting a comfortable win over Punjab’s Deepanshi Sharma and Riya Mishra of Uttar Pradesh, Narayani played a tough game against city’s Seeya Thakare before utilizing her opening advantage well to garner full points.
In the Open group, Gupta had a poor start as the second seed was forced to sign the peace treaty by lower-ranked Darsh Kansal from Madhya Pradesh in the opening round. Despite the draw, Gupta fought back to outclass Srinjoy Sarkar of West Bengal in the second round and drubbed Samdani Sahil Sagar from Gujarat on Wednesday. With 2.5 points in his kitty, Gupta will take on Tamil Nadu’s Jayachandra Srinivas Vellanki in their fourth-round battle to be played on the ninth table.
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