Pritam Singh and Alka Das moved into the second round on the opening day of 17th Jharkhand State Senior FIDE Rating Chess that began at Sarla Birla Public School in Mahilong, around 15km from capital Ranchi, on Thursday.

The tournament carries a prize money of Rs 55,000, which will be distributed among the top 15 players. Performance at the event will be the yardstick for stitching out the Jharkhand squad for senior and Under-25 national championships.

Pritam, a three-time state champion who is representing the income tax department, and Alka from East Singhbhum gained one point each by putting it across Ranchi's Vikas Kumar Mehta and Dhriti Burnwal, respectively, in the first round.

Other contestants who posted round one wins included Anshul Nigam, Pracheta Agarwal and Kumar Utkarsh (all from East Singhbhum), Priyanka Kumari, Saikat Dutta and Basant Khandelwal (from West Singhbhum) and Kumar Sanu (from Dhanbad).

Contestants from Singhbhum played confidently and used their form to the fullest. Most of the players, including Pracheta, Anshul and Utkarsh, are fresh from their outing at the state junior meet in Bokaro last month.

Pritam, who has an Elo rating of 2049, used all his experience to outplay his opponent while Alka faced no problem at all in outwitting Dhriti. Pritam, who also happens to be the CEO of All Jharkhand Chess Association (AJCA), is competing in the state meet after a long gap.

More than 113 participants, including 30 rated players from different districts like Ranchi, East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, Seraikela-Kharsawan, Dhanbad, Godda, Bokaro and Hazaribagh, are participating in the four-day event being organised by the state chess outfit. The tournament, which will conclude on June 4, will be played over eight rounds.

Earlier in the day, the event was jointly inaugurated by Sarla Birla Public School principal Paramjit Kaur and her counterpart from Gyan Mandir, Ghatshila, Sanjay Kumar Mallick.

Head of personnel and administration at Sarla Birla Public School Pradip Varma, AJCA chief executive officer Pritam Singh, joint secretary and tournament director Himanshu Chakraborty, Ranchi Chess Association head Manish Kumar, international arbiter Asit Baran Choudhary, national arbiters Deepak Kumar and Prabhat Ranjan Kumar were present at the inaugural ceremony.