SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Aug 7: Top Jharkhand players lagged behind in the title race of the FIDE rating chess championship under progress at St. Xavier Welfare Centre, Chaibasa.
After the completion of the fourth round, top-seeded and highest-rated player (1930) in the championship Bhudeo Tripathi of Ranchi with 3.5 points is running in the second position along with four other players while second seed and second highest rated (1918) player Rohan Shandilya of Jamshedpur is on the third position along with others.
On the other side, Bengal players Anibaran Basu (1326) and Rishan Deonath (1511) emerged in the top position in the title race with 4 points each after the completion of the fourth round.
Basu beat Vibhash Kumar Sinha while Rishan Deonath defeated Nikunj Agrawal to maintain a lead.
Adhiraj Mitra of Jharkhand, Ranit Maity of Bengal, Kamal Kishore Deonath, Narendra Agrawal, Anurag Jaiswal, Manish Sharma and Bhudeo Tripathi are jointly in second place in the title race with 3.5 points each.
Tripathi beat Sajan Barua of Bengal. Adhiraj Mitra and Ranit Maity shared a point in the fourth round while Narendra Agrawal and Kamal Kishore Deonath played a draw. Anurag Jaiswal beat Aniket Verma and Manish Sharma defeated Vedant Rajesh. All these players have 3.5 points.
Rohan Shandilya of Jamshedpur made his comeback in the championship with a victory over Shersonno Biswas in the fourth round. Besides him, Raja Bose, Bishwajit Chatterjee, Abhiraj Dey, Keshav Chandra, Tarun N, Aharshi Ghosh, Narendra Pandey, Jai Kumar, Suyash Patel, Swastik Bannerjee Ankush Raj along with 15 other players are on the third spot of the title race with 3 points each.
In the fifth round, Anibaran Basu and Rishan Deonath will face each other today.
This FIDE rating tournament is being sponsored by Rungta Steel TMT in which 179 players from 12 states are participating.
West Singhbhum District Chess Association secretary Basant Khandelwal said that 50 top players of different categories would be given prizes in the championship.
