Game start: Abhijeet (right) played 51 moves to beat Harshit. PK Ajith Kumar. | Photo Credit: PK Ajith Kumar
The second day also saw a spectacular showdown just like the first. There was nothing unusual on the top board in the second round of the 61st National Chess Championship at RPS International School on Sunday.
The only excitement during the live streaming was due to some technical glitches, which made some extremely improbable results seem possible on the top boards. But, that was fixed; so, even the online boards said that the top four seeds – Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, SP Sethuraman and Diptayan Ghosh – had won. Ganguly, playing the white side of the Sicilian Defence, saw his much younger opponent Siddhant Poonja play from an almost hopeless position. Black waited till the 65th move to have two queens to checkmate him. On the second board too, it was the Sicilian Defence, but it was an easy win for Black. Abhijeet won in 51 moves against Harshit Singh, albeit in less spectacular style.
On the third board, Sethuraman, who opted for the English opening, punished Eshan Wadhawan for some weak bishop moves early on and won in 28 moves.
Important results (second round): Surya Shekhar Ganguly (PSPB) 2 bt Siddhanth Poonja (Kar) 1; Harshit Singh (UP) 1 lost to Abhijeet Gupta (PSPB) 2; SP Sethuraman (PSPB) 2 bt Esshan Wadhawan (Del) 1; Kishan Kumar (Bih) 1 lost to Diptayan Ghosh (RSPB) 2; Karthik Venkataraman (AP) 2 bt Yohan Yadav (Tel) 1;
Abhinav Raj (Del) 1 lost to P. Iniyan (TN) 2; Sankalp Gupta (Maharashtra) 2 bt KK Chatterjee (Ben) 1;
Subhrajit Dey (Ben) 1 lost to Mitrabha Guha (RSPB) 2; Aronayak Ghosh (RSPB) 2 S/o Nimay Agarwal (Har) 1; S Saisarvesh (TN) 1 lost to NR Vignesh (RSPB) 2; NR Visakh (RSPB) 2 BT Idu Sheikh (CHT) 1; Arnab Agarwal (UP) 1 lost to Deep Sengupta (PSPB) 2;
Atharva Soni (Maharashtra) 1 lost to MR Lalit Babu (AP) 2; Sayantan Das (RSPB) 2 bt Ayan Garg (CHD) 1;
Prithvi Sharma (Har) 1 lost to Nilesh Saha (RSPB) 2.