Sayantan Das. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta: Sayantan Das of Scottish Church went into the sole lead with eight points after the eighth round of The Telegraph Schools’ Chess Championship at Gorky Sadan, on Saturday. The meet is sponsored by Himani Sona Chandi Chyawanprash, in association with NIIT (nguru), and is organised by Alekhine Chess Club.

Sayantan defeated Abhrapratim Manna of Don Bosco, Park Circus in the seventh round in a closed Sicilian game. Playing with black, Sayantan outplayed Abhrapratim in the middle game and went into a winning end game with two pawns up. Thereafter, it was only a matter of time before Abhrapratim resigned on 55th move.

Sayantan got the better of Vivekananda Mission’s Debankan Dhara in 34 moves in a Veresov opening. Debankan had opening problems and could not obtain equality. In the middle game, Sayantan owned the exchange by a super tactical stroke.

Arna Sarkar of Methodist School, Dankuni caused the upset of the day when he beat South Point’s Mitrabha Guha, who is rated 254 places higher than him, in the eighth round. In a Caro-Kann Defence, Black could not obtain equality from the opening and finally succumbed under Arna’s fine positional play in 53 moves.

Current state champion Diptayan Ghosh of South Point had a mixed day at office. In the seventh round, he beat Sourav Mondal of Sinthi Ramkrishna Sangha Bidyamandir in a rarely played Tchigorin defence. Sourav resigned on the 53rd move.

In the next round, Diptayan Ghosh was held by Chandrasish Majumder of St Xavier’s in a Four Knights game. Diptayan’s extra pass pawn on A5 was counter balanced by Chandasish’s invasion of major pieces into his opponent territory, which proved to be adequate to hold the draw in 49 moves.

Top board results: Sayantan Das bt Debankan Dhara, Chandrasish Majumdar drew with Diptayan Ghosh, Abhropratim Manna bt Rishav Mitra, Saurabh Anand drew with Sayan Bose, Arna Sarkar bt Mitrabha Guha, Kaustuv Kundu bt Prajapati Raj, Suvankar Maity bt Rohan Sen, Suvradeepta Das bt Adhip Ray, Kumar Sanu bt Sayantan Chandra, Arpan Das bt Ayon Roy, Saurabh Mandal bt Saptorshi Gupta, Aditya Chowdhury bt Arpita Mukherjee, Kumar Gaurav bt Tamojit Poddar, Rajdeep Sarkar bt Arkaprava Banerjee, Shiny Das bt Abhinaba Pal.