Commonwealth Championships begin; Virender Negi defeats Tania Sachdev in round 1

New Delhi (26 Jun 18):- Seasoned Delhi player Virender Singh Negi caused a major upset defeating International Master Tania Sachdev in the first round of the Commonwealth Chess Championship at the Leela Ambience Convention Hotel.

Playing white side of Neo-Catalan game, Negi was in a much worse position against her fancied opponent in the middle game and grabbed his chance as Tania overlooked bank rank mate under time pressure to lose a piece in a tactical skirmish. The game lasted 47 moves.

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Grandmaster Tejas Bakre survived some anxious moments before he was held to a draw by Aron Klevansky of South Africa in 32 moves.

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At the top of the tables, top seed Grandmaster Deep Sengupta defeated Hoolan Naipal of Mauritius while second seed Vaibhav Suri beat Kerala youngster Vinay Thomas Abraham without much struggle.

Third seed Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy accounted for Divya Lakshmi R while National Champion Lalith Babu had it easy against Joy Shah.

The Rs. 10 Lakh prize money championship was earlier inaugurated by Commonwealth President and AICF Secretary Mr. Bharat Singh Chauhan in a glittering ceremony.

The Championships have been split in 15 different categories. Apart from the open, there are under-8, 10,12,14,16,18 and 20 categories for boys and girls separately.

Pairings/Results

Round 1 on 2018/06/26 at 15:00 hrs

Bo.	No.		Name	Typ	Rtg	Pts.	Result	Pts.		Name	Typ	Rtg	No.
1	83	CM	Naipal Hoolan		1941	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Sengupta Deep		2565	1
2	2	GM	Vaibhav Suri		2556	0	1 – 0	0	AGM	Vinay Thomas Abraham		1938	84
3	85		Divya Lakshmi R		1934	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Deepan Chakkravarthy J.		2531	3
4	4	GM	Lalith Babu M R		2529	0	1 – 0	0		Joy Pankaj Shah		1929	86
5	87		Trivedi Karan R		1924	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Vishnu Prasanna. V		2525	5
6	6	GM	Debashis Das		2522	0	1 – 0	0	FM	Gluckman Paul		1922	88
7	89		Samal Ansuman		1922	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Swapnil S. Dhopade		2495	7
8	8	GM	Thejkumar M. S.		2495	0	1 – 0	0	WIM	Hamid Rani	S60	1918	90
9	91		Saranya Y		1908	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Kunte Abhijit		2494	9
10	10	IM	Karthik Venkataraman		2475	0	1 – 0	0		Bhagyashree Patil		1906	92
11	93	AFM	Choubey Saurabh		1899	0	0 – 1	0	IM	Visakh N R		2467	11
12	12	IM	Karthikeyan P.		2456	0	1 – 0	0		Sanskriti Goyal		1898	94
13	95		Huidrom Bhupendranath		1893	0	0 – 1	0	IM	Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh		2441	13
14	14	IM	Nitin S.		2441	0	1 – 0	0		Sudarshan Malga		1892	96
15	97	CM	Klevansky Aron		1889	0	½ – ½	0	GM	Bakre Tejas		2439	15
16	16	GM	Laxman R.R.		2438	0	1 – 0	0	AIM	Arora Manoj		1887	98
17	99		Roy Pallabi		1875	0	0 – 1	0	GM	Sundararajan Kidambi		2425	17
18	18	GM	Thipsay Praveen M		2405	0	1 – 0	0		Toshali V		1875	100
19	101		Negi Virender Singh		1868	0	1 – 0	0	IM	Tania Sachdev		2393	19
20	20	IM	Akash G		2391	0	1 – 0	0		Sambarta Banerjee		1865	102