Short wins Commonwealth title

Top seed British GM Grandmaster Nigel Short won the Commonwealth Chess Championship crown with a fine technical victory over Indian GM Pentyala Harikrishna in the ninth and final round in Mumbai on Sunday.

The championship is also an international open tournament and the overall title was won by second seed Grandmaster Smirnov Pavel of Russia. He tallied 7.5 points out of a possible 9, the same as Short, but won on better progressive scores.

However, Pavel cannot be the champion as he does not belong to a Commonwealth nation. GM Koneru Humpy added another feather to her cap by winning the Commonwealth Womens crown for the first time. She dethroned S Vijayalakshmi

who had to be content with the Silver this time owing to her slightly inferior progressive score.

The silver in the men's section went to Grandmaster Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh, who put up a sterling show to beat GM Sergey Iskusnyh of Russia in the last round. Murshed finished with 7 points in all and also shared the third place in the overall standings along with GM Dzhumaev Marat of Uzbekistan.

The Indian hopes of a Gold in the Mens section were dashed after seasoned Grandmaster Praveen Thipsay went down fighting to Smirnov earlier in the day. Thipsay, gold medallist in the 1985 edition, however got the bronze for his superlative effort that netted him 6.5 points in all.