Asian Chess Championship: Harsha Retains Praggu By : The Tribune India | So Good News

PTI

NEW DELHI, October 31

Indian grandmaster Harsha Bharatakoti played fellow countryman and GM R Praggnanandha, the top seed, in the sixth round of the open section to take a five-point lead at the Asian Continental Chess Championship here on Sunday.

The Bharatakoti-Praggnanandhaa match ended in 33 runs and both players agreed to be out. This ended Bharatakoti’s four-match winning streak. Eight Indian players – Pragnanandhaa, Leon Luke Mendonca, Karthikeyan Murali, Koustav Chatterjee, S.L. Narayanan, B Adhiban, SP Sethuraman and Aravindh Chithambaram – half a point behind Bharatakoti. The rest are Saparmyrat Atabayev, Maksat Atabayev and Shamsiddin Vohidov with 4.5 points. In other major results, Mendonca tied with Sethuraman, Murali and Adhiban shared the points, while Vohidov shared the points with Maksat.

In the women’s competition, India’s GM PV Nandhidhaa took the sole lead by beating compatriot Priyanka Nuttaki by 61 steps to score 5.5 points.