Abhijeet Gupta amongst leaders, setback for Mary Ann Gomes

Kolkta, Aug 25 (UNI) Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta of Bharat Petroleum continued with his winning ways and downed Asian Under-14 champion S Nitin of Tamil Nadu in the third round of the 35th Parsvnath National Junior Chess championship now in progress here at Bapu Samaj Sewa Kendra.

Meanwhile, double International Master norm holder G N Gopal of Kerala was held to a draw by Shreyans Jain Dhaklia of Chattisgarh in what was a minor flutter of the third round.

In the 21st edition of girls' championship being played simultaneously, International Women Master and second seed Kruttika Nadig maintained a clean slate with her third convincing victory in the event.

On the receiving end was P Lakshmi Sahiti who could not match the endgame abilities of her more famous rival.

Earlier, in the second round played late yesterday, one major upset was recorded in each section. The biggest gainer was P K Jayashree of Tamil Nadu who defeated top seed and India number two Mary Ann Gomes of West Bengal in a scintillating affair.

In the second round of boys section, Fenil Shah of Gujrat recorded a big result accounting for double IM norm holder S P Sethuraman of Tamil Nadu.

Shah continued with his dream run into the third round as well as he held Soumitra Majumdar of Maharashtra to an easy draw.

After three rounds as many as nine players emerged as joint leaders with a cent per cent score in the open section. They are IM norm holder G Rohit, Women Grandmaster D Harika, Akshat Khamparia, Bitan Banerjee, B Adhiban, Aswin Jayaram, R Premnath, Gurpreet Singh Maras and Abhijeet Gupta.

In the girls' championship there are eight leaders with an absolute score Saheli Nath, Mahima Rajmohan, Soumya Swaminathan, P K Jayashree, R Preethi, P Uthra, Supriya Maji and Kruttika Nadig.

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