Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly, a product of The Telegraph Schools' Chess Championship, helps five-year-old Chandreyee Hazra, the youngest girl participant, make the symbolic first move at the inauguration of its 17th edition at Gorky Sadan on Friday. Among others present were Asoke Ghosh, president, Alekhine Chess Club. Picture by Santosh Ghosh

Calcutta: Top seed T. Purushothaman of Andhra Pradesh was a disappointed boy on Friday when he arrived at Gorky Sadan for the finals of The Telegraph Schools’ Chess Championship.

Purushothaman, a student of class XI, was denied entry by the organisers as the tournament is restricted to school students up to class X. Consequently, Debayan Majumdar a student of class X of St James’ School was given the top billing in this only Fide rating tournament for school children in the country.

Earlier, the meet was inaugurated by Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly, a find of the tournament and a past champion.

Surya made a symbolic move on the demonstration board against the youngest girl of the meet five-year-old Chandreyee Hazra of Gospel Home School, Serampore.

A total of 275 players from 147 schools are taking part in this 11 round Fide rating tournament. A record number of 30 Fide rated players, including three from Bangladesh, are taking part here.

Top seed Debayan had little difficulty in outwitting Rishi Raj Sarkar of Hind Motor Education Centre in just 20 moves.

All the other seeded players scored comfortable victories in their first round games. Among the important winners of the day were Minhazuddin Ahmed Sagar, Md Imran Ali of Bangladesh, Soumya Thakurta, Debaditta Sinha Biswas, Souvik Chakraborty, Suman Basu and Shahid Ahmed of Bengal, Rajib Dhar, Swyams Mishra and Ashish Kumar the champions of the Guwahati, Bhubaneswar and Jamshedpur editions, respectively.

The youngest participant, four years and 7 months old Suvrodip Das of Gurukul Vidya Mandir went down to Shreya Basu.

Among the visually challenged players, Sudip Rajbanshi of Louis Braille Memorial Schoolfor the Sightless, Uttarpara beat Devraj Banerjee of M.P. Birla HS School.

The second round games start at 3:30 pm on Saturday.

TOP BOARD RESULTS

Debayan Majumdar (1) bt Rishi Raj Sarkar (0); Rourib Das (0) lost to Rajib Dhar (1); Minazudiin Ahmed Sagar (1) bt Snehasish Gangopadhyay (0); Duke Nandy (0) lost to Mohammad Imran Ali (1); Soumya Thakurta (1) bt Utsav Mukherjee (0); Ashoke Vikramaditya Sen (0) lost to Debaditta Sinha Biswas (1); Parag Hunny (1) bt Shivam Rathi (0); Palash Purkayastha (0) lost to Souvik Chakraborty (1); Suman Basu (1) bt Ajahar Alam (0); Sayantan Guha (0) lost to Debashis Das (1).