Grandmaster and former World junior champion Abhijeet Gupta won the Commonwealth Chess Championship after settling for a quick draw with Arghyadip Das in the ninth and final round in New Delhi, on Tuesday.
Gupta regained the crown with a very impressive eight points out of a possible nine, winning the first seven games in the championship and drawing the last two with utmost ease.
"I guess I was doing well right from the start, I got off with some victories and it was nice to win seven games in a row, I could not remember the last time I did that in any International event. That was it I gess my seventh round victory was the most important and it came rather quickly as Deep Sengupta was not so well prepared which I found a bit unusual but obviously took it!" said Gupta on his victory.
Das came second winning the silver ahead of M R Lalith Babu who won his game to win the bronze medal.
In the women's section, Padmini Rout, S Vijayalakshmi and S Meenakshi all won their games to finish among the medals.
Rout won the gold, Vijayalakshmi won silver while Meenakshi bagged the bronze. Both Vijayalakshmi and Meenakshi won the last six games in the championship.
Important results: Arghyadip Das (7.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (8); S. Ravi Teja (6.5) lost to M. R. Lalith Babu (7.5); G. Akash (6.5) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy (7.5); Siva Mahadevan (6.5) lost to M. Karthikeyan (7); N. R. Vignesh (6) lost to Deep Sengupta (7); Aravindh Chithambaram (7) bt Nicholas van der Nat (RSA, 6); Ziaur Rahman (6.5) drew with N. Sanjay (6.5); Abhijit Kunte (6.5) drew with Sriram Jha (6.5); Ramnath Bhuvanesh (7) bt S. L. Narayanan (6); Ankit Rajpara (6.5) drew with S. Nitin (6.5); S. Vijayalakshmi (7) bt Niaz Murshed (Ban, 6); N. Lokesh (6) lost to Padmini Rout (7); Mohammad Minhazuddin (Ban, 7) bt S. Jayakumaar (6); Himanshu Sharma (5.5) lost to S. Meenakshi (7).
Image: Abhijeet Gupta.
Photograph courtesy: Abhijeet Gupta/Facebook
