Three-way tie for first place' Fenil Shah shocks Srinath

Panaji, Aug 12 (UNI) Kolkata's grandmaster and top seed Sandipan Chanda struggled past national' A' player M S Thejkumar in the 10th round to set up a three-way tie for top spot and an exicting finish in the All India FIDE rating chess tournament here.

In a Queen's Gambit declined exchange variation, that looked heading towards a draw auntil the very end, Karnataka's Thejkumar fumbled in time pressure and gifted away the point.

Chanda's Olympian teammate D P Singh demolished Vinothkumar in just under two hours to join Chanda in the lead in an irregular opening. His Jharkhand stablemate Umakant Sharma flattened IM Dinesh Kumar in just 24 moves from the white side of a Sicilian defence.

With this victory, Umakant, who is not even an FM presently, has beaten three international masters and the second seed Ratnakaran in this tournament alone.

World u-12 champion N Srinath was shocked by youngster Fenil Shah of Gujarat. Srinath, whose next tournament is the Malaysian open later this month, was given food for thought by Fenil who comprehensively beat him with the black pieces in a Scandinavian defence in 59 moves.

Goan youngster Shubham Pinge to beat fancied Naveen Hegde. In a French defence Tarrasch Variation, the players exhanged the Queen's early and Shubham finally got the better of the duel, in an opposite coloured Bishop ending.

Not less than four of the unrated Goan players scored the necessary points within the 10 rounds to accomplish their international rating.

Niraj Saripalli (1942), Sanjay Kavlekar (1947), Manmesh Naik (1950) and P M Kantak (1998) have registered their names in the FIDE logbook.

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