Abhijeet Gupta lifts Parsvnath Chess trophy

New Delhi, Jan 20 (UNI) Grandmaster-to-be Abhijeet Gupta scored a thumping victory over GM Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan to annex the title in the 6th Parsvnath International Chess tournament that concluded here today.

Playing with white Abhijeet was a picture of confidence when he sat across Marat and faced the Dutch Leningrad. He displayed top form in getting comoplex position after sacrificing a pawn and Dzhumaev's form deserted him as he failed to strike the best plan.

As it happened in the game, Abhijeet won an exchange with well-crafted manoeuvres and went on to register a smooth victory.

Apart from the glittering trophy, the 18-year old became richer by Rs. 2.25 lakhs.

For the records, Abhijeet won nine and lost one game in the third round against Ram Prakash. His rating performance was 2666 ELO points which is way above a GM norm performance.

This was by far the best achievement of Abhijeet's career which is shaping up excellently in the past one year.

''I am really happy especially with the way things went my way in the last three rounds", Abhijeet said referring to his triumph over GM Elizbar Ubilava, Ganguly and finally Dzhumaev.

The champion was elated having bettered his third place performance in the Commonwealth Championship.

''I am not sure and it is not easy to compare, but I think this tournament was tougher for me than Commonwealth where I finished third,'' he added.

Grandmaster and National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly also delivered the goods on the final day at the expense of Sriram Jha.

The Kolkata based GM finished clear second to bag the prize purse of Rs 1.6 Lakhs on 8.5 points.

It was a seven way tie for the third spot in which GB Prakash's tie-break was superior for a clean Indian sweep for the first time in the history of Parsvnath chess tournaments.

G B Prakash went on to make his fourth GM norm after another spectacular performance against M R Venkatesh in the final round.

C Pravin Kumar, Arjun Tiwari, Debashish Das and VAV Rajesh went on to make their International Master norms from the tournament.

UNI RAR AM BD2013