Grandmaster and former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta came up with an inspired performance in the final round to defeat Aleksander Wohl of Australia and annexed the gold medal in the Commonwealth Chess Championship 2017.
The Delhi-based stretched his total Commonwealth titles to four in the last five years and completed a hat-trickof titles. In 2015, he had won the title in Delhi and had won the 2016 edition at Sri Lanka.
“Every championship or tournament is special but somehow I am able to bring out good chess playing especially the Commonwealth in last few years”, said Gupta after the game. The four times champion pointed out that he played decently right through. “I was better in most of the games I won, but I was worse against Tejas Bakre especially in the penultimate round, generally I am satisfied about my play here and hope to take this forward in the next few events”, he said.
Vaibhav Suri won the silver while the bronze medal went to Tejas Bakre. Vaibhav Suri played out a draw with fellow GM Abhijeet Kunte, who finished fourth, while Bakre played well in a difficult position to beat M S Thej Kumar.
The Women’s Championship was won by Swati Ghate who got rewarded for some excellent play in the early phase of the event. In the final round Ghate defeated Indian junior champion Kumar Gaurav. The Silver here went to Mary Ann Gomes while last year’s champion Tania Sachdev had to be content with the bronze.
Swati Ghate and Abhijeet Gupta
The Commonwealth Chess Championship 2017 was held from 2-10th July at Leela Ambience Convention Hotel in New Delhi, India.
Final standings (top 40):
1 GM Gupta Abhijeet IND 2625 – 7.5
2 GM Vaibhav Suri IND 2558 – 7
3 GM Bakre Tejas IND 2449 – 7
4 GM Kunte Abhijit IND 2504 – 6.5
5 IM Wohl Aleksandar H. AUS 2355 – 6.5
6 IM Shyaamnikhil P IND 2450 – 6.5
7 FM Erigaisi Arjun IND 2324 – 6.5
8 GM Swapnil S. Dhopade IND 2517 – 6
9 GM Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. IND 2593 – 6
10 WGM Swati Ghate IND 2278 – 6
11 GM Mollah Abdullah Al Rakib BAN 2480 – 6
12 GM Gagare Shardul IND 2472 – 6
13 GM Grover Sahaj IND 2484 – 6
14 FM Mitrabha Guha IND 2301 – 6
15 IM Sardana Rishi AUS 2379 – 6
16 IM Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh IND 2392 – 6
17 IM Thejkumar M. S. IND 2491 – 6
18 WGM Gomes Mary Ann IND 2331 – 6
19 GM Ankit R. Rajpara IND 2474 – 6
20 GM Rahman Ziaur BAN 2527 – 6
21 GM Murshed Niaz BAN 2399 – 6
22 IM Krishna C R G IND 2399 – 6
23 IM Tania Sachdev IND 2404 – 6
24 GM Thipsay Praveen M IND 2419 – 6
25 GM Hossain Enamul BAN 2455 – 6
26 IM Chakravarthi Reddy M IND 2227 – 5.5
27 Aradhya Garg IND 2281 – 5.5
28 WIM Thipsay Bagyashree Sathe IND 2046 – 5.5
29 GM Deepan Chakkravarthy J. IND 2482 – 5.5
30 WGM Soumya Swaminathan IND 2349 – 5.5
31 WFM Srija Seshadri IND 2200 – 5.5
32 FM Doluweera Minul Sanjula SRI 2092 – 5.5
33 Mehta Naitik R IND 1972 – 5.5
34 WIM Chitlange Sakshi IND 2112 – 5.5
35 Pranavananda V IND 2102 – 5.5
36 WGM Kiran Manisha Mohanty IND 2170 – 5.5
37 WGM Kulkarni Bhakti IND 2255 – 5
38 Kumar Gaurav IND 2014 – 5
39 Nayak Rajesh IND 2198 – 5
40 WCM Mrudul Dehankar IND 2155 – 5