SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, February 7: The 12th-time state champion Pritam Singh of Jamshedpur maintained his supremacy in state chess by bagging the title of the 3rd Jharkhand State Rapid Chess Tournament.
In a two-day tournament, which concluded at Ranchi Sarala Birla University, Pritam Singh mustered the highest 7.5 points in eight rounds to get the first prize of Rs10,000 with a glittering trophy.
In the championship, Pritam Singh was unbeaten and Manish Sharma of West Singhbhum forced him to draw in the 7th round and snatched half point.
Three players Ishant Kumar of Dhanbad, Adit Raj of Ranchi and Krishna Kumar Saw of Dhanbad got equal 6.5 points each.
However, on the basis of a tie-breaker, Ishant Kumar got the second position leaving Adit Raj and Krishna Saw in the 3rd and 4th positions respectively. They got cash prizes of Rs 7,000, Rs 5000 and Rs 3000 respectively.
Rohan Vijay Shandilya of Jamshedpur, who was the second-highest rating (1913) player in the tournament after ultimate champion Pritam Singh had to contend with the 5th position with six points.
Besides Rohan, five players, Aabhash of Hazaribagh, Singh Ankit Kumar Saraikela, Navieka Jaiswal of Jamshedpur, Harsh Kumar Jha, Jamshedpur and Rohit of Jamshedpur also earned six points each but had to contend with 7th to 10th position respectively.
Moreover, seven players Manish Sharma (WS), Milan Kumar (Saraikela), Kundu Uttam (Ranchi), Nitin Raj Sengar (Hazaribag), Pratibha Singh (Dhanbad), Abhinav Singh (Jamshedpur) and Rishi Raj (Ranchi) got 5.5 points and left on 11th to 17th position in the tournament.
Three players Ajit Masih, Sunidhi Singh (both JSR) and Raja Bose of Dhanbad got five points each. The official said the top 20 players were given cash prizes.
The victory of Pritam Singh keeps significant as he had been prevented from participating in three successive chess tournaments- the 4th JCA Blitz tournament (Jamshedpur in November), the NK Sinha Memorial tournament (Chaibasa in January) and the 5th JCA Blitz chess tournament Jamshedpur in last week of January.
Sources said due to an unsavoury incident in the state championship in Ranchi, the All Jharkhand Chess Association secretary Neeraj Mishra had banned his participation in any tournament till he is absolved from allegation levelled by Bhola Nath Das of Jamshedpur.
Pritam was even not allowed to participate in his own JCA tournament. However, West Singhbhum Association secretary Basant Khandelwal denied he stopped Pritam from participating in NK Sinha Memorial chess on any directive. Interestingly, even after the resignation of Niraj Mishra Pritam did not participate in the 5th JCA tournament held at Jamshedpur.
After Abhishek Das (2258), International Master Neeraj Mishra (2232), B Singhania ( 2227) Vaishakhi Das ( 2190) is the highest-rated player of Jharkhand.
