Maharashtra’s Vishal Shah stopped the unbeaten run of Deep Sengupta from Jharkhand, with a clinical victory in Sicilian defence game in the seventh round of the 1st Fantoosh National sub-junior Super League chess championship. At the end of the eighth round on Tuesday, Deep Sengupta and Bengal’s Mary Ann Gomes continued to lead in the boys and girls sections respectively. RESULTS Boys (Round 8): Nikhilesh Kumar (AP) (4) drew with Y Sandeep (AP) (1.5); Shah Vishal (Mah) (2.5) lost to D Sai Srinivas (AP) (5); Sunil Rangarajan (Kar) (4) lost to Deep Sen Gupta (Jha) (7); S Arun Prasad (TN) (3.5) lost to S Sai Krishna (AP) (2.5); Akshayraj Kore (Mah) (4.5) drew with D Krishna (TN) (4.5); Joydeep Dutta (WB) (1) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (Raj) (6) and P Praveen Prasad (AP) (5) lost to G Rohit (AP) (5). Girls (Round 8): Anoori Shah (Guj) (3) drew with I Shobana (TN) (4); Anjanaa N Sowjanya (TN) (3) bt K L Praneetha (AP) (1); M Rajadarshini (TN) (3.5) lost to Mary Ann Gomes (WB) (6.5); M Rajmohan (TN) (5) lost to Supriya Maji (WB) (4); KM Mohanthy (Ori) (3.5) drew with Kruttika Nadig (Mah) (5.5); N Vinuthna (AP) (4.5) lost to Saheli Nath (WB) (5) and S Swaminathan (Mah) (4.5) lost to Aswathy Balagopalan (Ker) (3). Deep defeated Karnataka’s Sunil Rangarajan in another Sicilian defence game. After a series of wild exchanges, Deep positioned his rook and queen well to win material and the game in 35 moves.Deep is in sole lead with seven points and is followed by Rajasthan’s Abhijeet Gupta, who increased his tally to seven points with a lucky win over Bengal’s Joydeep Dutta. In the Queen pawn opening, Abhijeet won a pawn on the 18th move but Dutta had two bishops as compensation. Dutta reached a king and one rook versus king, rook and knight of Abhijeet. With time trouble creeping in, Dutta misplayed a move to lose the game. Though the material was less enough to claim a draw, Dutta didn’t utilise the situation and fumbled in the end.Mary Ann Gomes surged ahead with her two consecutive victories over Tamil Nadu girls in the distaff side. After defeating Anjanaa N Sowjanya in the seventh round, Gomes got the better of M Rajadarshini in the eighth round. Gomes played the Dutch defence and reached an advantageous position in the middlegame. Gomes coordinated her two rooks, bishop and queen well to win in 37 moves.
