Calcutta: International Master Diptayan Ghosh of South Point High School maintained his winning spree to score his seventh straight win in Round VII of the 25th The Telegraph Schools' Fide-rated Chess Championship, organised by Alekhine Chess Club, at Gorky Sadan, on Monday.
Subduing the second-seeded A Ra Harikrishnan of Chennai, Diptayan has overcome his major hurdle and seems poised to win the competition. Diptayan is half a point ahead of Aranyak Ghosh of DPS North Calcutta, who defeated Anustoop Biswas of MP Birla High School.
On the second board, third and fourth seeds, Mitrabha Guha and Rajdeep Sarkar, drew their Queens Indian defence game to raise their tally to six points apiece.
Besides Mitrabha and Rajdeep, eight other players have scored six points each.
Diptayan opted for his usual Catalan Opening and his pieces were sitting pretty comfortably. To activate the passive pieces, Harikrishnan made a C5 pawn break, which went on to help his opponent more, resulting in a pawn gain.
Diptayan simplified matters by exchanging all the pieces, except queen. In the resultant queen and pawn ending, the extra pawn became vital to help Diptayan get the point and set himself up to clinch the winner's prize.
"I am playing pretty well right now and hopefully I will not disappoint on the last day," Diptayan said.
Even Harikrishnan lost on Monday, he is a promising player. One of the few to get an IM norm at such an young age, he is just 14, Harikrishnan is the one for the future. And it will be not be a surprise if we hear a lot more about this boy in near future.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly will be distributing the prizes after the final round on Tuesday.
(ROUND VII)
Diptayan Ghosh (7) bt A Ra Harikrishnan (5.5); Mitrabha Guha (6) drew with Rajdeep Sarkar (6); Anustoop Biswas (5.5) lost to Aranyak Ghosh (6.5); Samriddhaa Ghosh (5.5) lost to Kaustuv Kundu (6); Sayan Banik (5) lost to Arpita Mukherjee (6); Arya Bhakta (5) lost to Mohammed Fahad Rahman (6); Sayantan Das (5) lost to Sonkalan Bharati (6); Suvradeepta Das (6) bt Sparsh Khandelwal (5); Saptorshi Gupta (5) lost to Shashwat Chakraborty (6); Avijaan Roy Choudhury (5.5) drew with Rajarshi Dutta (5.5); Subhayan Kundu (6) bt Sougata Halder (5); Dipanjan Chowdhury (5.5) drew with Ambarish Sharma (5.5); Utsab Chatterjee (5) lost to Soumma Chakraborty (6); Srijit Paul (5.5) bt Ritika Doshi (5); Angira Choudhuri (4.5) lost to Ritam Nag (5.5); Basant Kr Das (4.5) lost to Sarbojit Paul (5.5); Sudarshan Mitra (4.5) lost to Soumyajit Das (5.5); Nilanta Chanda (4.5) lost to Sayantan Chandra (5.5); Ayushman Majumdar (4.5) lost to Sanket Chakravarty (5.5); Debarghya Samanta (4.5) lost to Rohan Sen (5.5); Asmita Das (4.5) lost to Aryan B Joshi (5.5); Aneek Das (5.5) bt Aritra Ganguly (4.5); Arijit Mukherjee (5) drew with Arunava Bhattacharjee (5); Moubrati Ghosh (4.5) lost to Sambarta Banerjee (5.5)
