Chanda maintains lead

MUMBAI, AUG 23: Teenager Sandeepan Chanda (Elo 2433) of Goodricke Chess Academy emerged as the sole leader at the end of the sixth-round ...

MUMBAI, AUG 23: Teenager Sandeepan Chanda (Elo 2433) of Goodricke Chess Academy emerged as the sole leader at the end of the sixth-round of the 37th National B chess championship, organised by the Maharashtra and Bombay Chess Associations, at the Andheri Sports Complex today.

Chanda is on 5.5 points. He defeated his colleague Surya Shekhar Ganguly (Elo 2340) in the sixth-round.

Arjun Tiwari, a 10th standard student of Dyaneshwar Vidyalaya (Aurangabad) excelled by defeating IM Mithrakant (Elo 2362) of NLC.

On the top board, in a Sicilian Defence Buleslavky variation game, Chanda handled the black pieces against Ganguly. In the middle game, he went an exchange up and developed two connected passers on the f’ and e’ files. Chanda later threatened to mate by pushing the f’ pawn to the f3 square. At this interval position, Ganguly resigned in the 40th move.

On the second board, Soman and V Koshy agreed for a short draw lasting only seven moves.

Teenager Himanshu Sharma of Haryana rallied for 48 movesto hold top seed RB Ramesh to a draw.

TOP BOARD RESULTS

SS Ganguly (4.5) lost to Sandeepan Chanda (5.5); SS Soman (5) drew V Koshy (5); RB Ramesh (4.5) drew V Koshy (5); P Konguvel (5) bt Girinath (4); Satyapragyan (4) lost to Lanka Ravi (5); Atanu Lahiri (4.5) drew Gurpreet Pal (4.5); K Murugan (5) bt Kherdekar (4); Routim B (4.5) drew NS Babu (4.5); Vishal Sareen (4.5) drew PM Chandran (4.5); Harikrishna (5) bt Sharad Tilak (4); S Ravi (5) bt Hari Om Sharma (4); Tejkumar (4.5) drew S Kidambe (4.5); Syed Anwar (4) lost to Sharma (5); RS Kashelkar (5) bt Vijaylakshmi (4); P Mithrakant (3.5) lost to Arjun Tiwari (5).