West Bengal’s Neelash Saha stayed steady and won the open title while State-mate Samriddhaa Ghosh pulled off a big surprise to pocket the girls’ trophy in the 30th National under-17 chess championship at the Oberon Mall here on Sunday.
The second-seeded Neelash, the overnight leader and a former under-13 National champion, had a good run here and defeated Gujarat’s Aditya P. Melani in the final round.
“I was confident of winning the title as I had been consistent here,” said the Kolkata-based Saha who finished with 9.5 points in the 11-round event. Incidentally, the top three finishers — top-seeded Aronyak Ghosh and Utsab Chatterjee were second and third — are also from Bengal.
Meanwhile Samriddhaa, the fourth seed, suffered a shocking opening round loss but still did not give up.
“I’ve messed up the last rounds in earlier championships but here, though I lost the opening round, I felt I could come back…I’ve seen players coming back,” said Ghosh.
“And the turning point was the win over Jyothsna (the third seed from TN, who was among the leaders after the previous round). This is my first National title.”
Ghosh beat the overnight leader, Andhra Pradesh’s ninth-seeded B. Kalyani, in the final round and after the top-seeded Saina Salonika drew her game against Delhi’s Palkin Kaur, she emerged a clear winner with 8.5 points from 11 rounds.
Salonika and Kalyani were second and third.
Select results (last round):
Open: Neelash Saha bt Aditya P. Melani, Aronyak Ghosh bt R. Sibi Visal, Utsab Chatterjee bt Arjun Gupta, Ayush Sharma drew with Jayachandra Srinivas, Rakshith Srinivasan drew with J.J. Nawin.
Girls: Samriddhaa Ghosh bt B. Kalyani, Saina Salonika drew with Palkin Kaur, L. Jyothsna bt Diya Chowdhury, Divyabharathi Masanam bt Shanya Mishra, Swara Lakshmi Nair lost to Sneha Bharathakoti.
Final placings (top five only): Open: 1. Saha (WB, 9.5 points), 2. Ghosh (WB, 9), 3. Chatterjee (WB, 8), 4. Gupta (Del, 8), 5. Nawin (TN, 7.5).
Girls: 1. Samriddhaa (WB, 8.5), 2. Saina (Odi, 8), 3. Kalyani (AP, 8), 4. Jyothsna (TN, 8), 5. Sneha (Tel, 7.5).
