Deepan maintains lead; Humpy, Ganguly beaten in National 'A' Chess

Visakhapatnam, Apr 14 (UNI) GM Elect Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu split points but maintained his lead after 16 rounds while Koneru Humpey and defending champion SS Ganguly lost their games in the 43rd National A Chess Championships here today Deepan, who has now 12 points to his credit, was lucky to share points with tailender Vikramaditya Kamble of Maharashtra after an opening blunder.

However, his lead was unaffected as both of the other title contenders Koneru Humpy of Andhra Pradesh and the reigning champion Surya Sekhar Ganguly of Indian Oil Corporation lost their games.

Ganguly, who has an extra game to play, lost to Sriram Jha of LIC and is now in third place with 10.5 points behind MR Venkatesh (BPCL) and Jharkhand rookie player Dwarka Prasad Singh, who, with 11 points each, are in joint second.

Meanwhile, Grandmaster Koneru Humpy had a disappointing 16th round game losing to Sundarajan Kidambi (BPCL) to finish at fourth with 10 points.

Venkatesh, who achieved his maiden GM norm yesterday, scored his third straight victory against Himanshu Sharma of Himachal Pradesh in just 27 moves.

In other game, Dwarka Prasad held seasoned Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte of IOC to a creditable draw.

In the women's section, Swathi Ghate (10.5 points) of LIC maintained her lead after 14 rounds beating Aarthie Ramaswamy of Indian Airlines.

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