JAIPUR: Continuing the series of upsets in the 11th National Amateur
Chess Championship
, Delhi’s
Harish Sharma
stunned top seed
Anadakat Dutva
(2173) of Gujarat to take sole lead at the SMS Indoor Stadium here on Thursday.
Harish registered one of his most memorable wins when he trounced Dutva in the fifth round of the 2300 Open category on the top board.
In the same category, Sunny Bedi (1730) of Rajasthan has also achieved joint second place with 4.5 points to his credit. Sunny shocked third seed Peter Anand (2031) of Puducherry, who has a higher rating than him.
Similarly, Mrityunjay Kumar (1800) of Bihar also surprised higher rated K Kumar S of Tamil Nadu to share the second spot with Sunny.
Second seed Arvinderpreet Singh (2057) is still in contention by winning four consecutive matches after an unexpected defeat in the first round.
Even in the women’s category of 2300 rating, fifth seed Shanmati Sri (1600) of TN has taken a solo lead by defeating Shivamashika (1469) of Telangana on the top board. Kasturi Bhai (1590) of Andaman and Nicobar beat TN’s Kavya S (1296), while Prishita Gupta (1762) of Delhi got the better of Tanishka Kotia (1787) of Haryana to jointly retain the second position.
In the 2000 Open category, Vedant Garg (1676) of Chandigarh and Abhijeet Joshi of Maharashtra shared the lead with 4.5 points each to their credit.
Samarth Warrier, Bhaskar Ratna Reddy, Prithvi Sharma, Pranay Akula, Salil Kumar, Mehul Sondhi and Dhruv Singh Bisht are jointly at second place by scoring 4 points apiece.
Among the women in the 2000 category, Sania Rafiq Tadvi (1535) of Maharashtra has taken the solo lead by scoring 5/5 points. Behind them, Anushka Jain of Rajasthan (1316) and Drishti Ghosh of Karnataka (1587) are in second place with 4 points.
In the 1700 rating category, Rutherford (1678) of TN outclassed Utkarsh Agarwal (1540) of Madhya Pradesh and Omkar Shelke (1507) of Maharashtra to jointly lead this tough category. The second spot is being shared by 11 players.
Asudani Ruhani Raj (1444) of Gujarat prevailed over UP’s Riya Mishra (1429) on the top board to take sole lead with 5 points.
Arpita Patankar, Kanishka Chaudhary, Sovana Sonali Jena, Rashmika Mranganti, Aayu Shree Sarkar, Saganpriya and Tanisha Drolia followed Asudani with 4 points each.
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