Despite a last round defeat, 25-year old International Master Anwesh Upadhyaya of Odisha won the National Rapid Chess Championship that concluded at Kolkata on August 3, 2017.

In the interesting final round, Anwesh who was leading with 9/10 lost to top seed Grand Master Laxman. Strangely, P Saravanakrishnan of Tamil Nadu who was in the second position on 8.5 also lost to GM Deep Sengupta.

Although rattled, tenth seed Anwesh and seed 15 Saravanakrishnan took the top two places. There was a tie for the second place on 8.5 points and Laxman was third behind untitled Saravanakrishnan.

This event attracted six GMs, one WGM (Soumya), 11 IMs and 175 players in all. The tournament director was IM Atanu Lahiri. The total prize fund for this event and the National Blitz slated for August 4 are Rs.2,50,000.

International Arbiter Rajendra Shidore of Pune was the chief arbiter. The event took place at Bhowanipur Education Society College and was organised by the Bengal Chess Association from August 1-3, 2017.

By Arvind Aaron

Final standings:

1 IM Anwesh Upadhyaya 2385 – 9
2 Saravana Krishnan P. 2357 – 8.5
3 GM Laxman R.R. 2530 – 8.5
4 GM Neelotpal Das 2369 – 8.5
5 GM Sriram Jha 2372 – 8.5
6 GM Sengupta Deep 2529 – 8.5
7 Koustav Chatterjee 1904 – 8
8 IM Rathnakaran K. 2454 – 8
9 IM Sharma Dinesh K. 2369 – 8
10 IM Shyaamnikhil P 2463 – 8
11 IM Nitin S. 2465 – 8
12 CM Aronyak Ghosh 1944 – 8
13 GM Roy Chowdhury Saptarshi 2486 – 8
14 IM Karthikeyan P. 2429 – 8
15 Kaustuv Kundu 2027 – 7.5
16 WGM Soumya Swaminathan 2266 – 7.5
17 IM Rajesh V A V 2301 – 7.5
18 Ram S. Krishnan 2312 – 7.5
19 IM Palit Somak 2332 – 7.5
20 AGM Ritam Nag 1787 – 7.5
21 IM Shetty Rahul 2238 – 7.5
22 Sarbojit Paul 1751 – 7.5
23 FM Sai Krishna G V 2369 – 7.5
24 GM Thipsay Praveen M 2387 – 7.5
25 Baivab Mishra 1957 – 7
26 FM Mitrabha Guha 2063 – 7
27 IM Rohan Ahuja 2178 – 7
28 IM Satyapragyan Swayangsu 2388 – 7
29 FM Rajdeep Sarkar 1975 – 7
30 Sanjib Mali 1575 – 7
31 Bhattacharya Niladri Shekhar 2046 – 7
32 Anustoop Biswas 1929 – 7
33 Subhayan Kundu 1795 – 7
34 Nayak Rajesh 2012 – 7
35 Vatsal Singhania 1812 – 7
36 Suvradeepta Das 1847 – 7
37 Joshi Govind Ballabh 2149 – 7
38 Shrutarshi Ray 1687 – 7
39 Aditya Basu 1703 – 7
40 Ayush Jha 1452 – 7
41 Raghav Srivathsav V 1812 – 7
42 Nayak Sanjeeban 1817 – 7
43 Sayantan Chandra 1625 – 7
44 Negi Virender Singh 1999 – 6.5
45 AGM Sa Kannan 1989 – 6.5
46 Mari Arul S. 2073 – 6.5
47 Shetye Siddhali 1921 – 6.5
48 Ambarish Sharma 1496 – 6.5
49 Ishaan Bansal 1730 – 6.5
50 Utsab Chatterjee 1533 – 6.5
51 Saptorshi Gupta 1720 – 6.5
52 AGM Shahid Ahmed S.K. 1811 – 6.5
53 Tejash Jain 1156 – 6.5
54 AGM Arka Sengupta 1703 – 6
55 Somakanta Singh Haobam 1634 – 6
56 Mrityunjay Kumar 1500 – 6
57 Sumit Roy 1681 – 6
58 Shuban Saha 1571 – 6
59 Raghav Bansal 1507 – 6
60 Dutta Sarthak 1607 – 6
61 Shaati Majumder 1755 – 6
62 Sheikh Jahan 1421 – 6
63 Rohan Nag Chowdhury 1460 – 6
64 Gaurav Sood 1366 – 6
65 Rajarshi Dutta 1545 – 6
66 Arpan Das (jr) 1644 – 6
67 Patra Subhendu Kumar 1630 – 6
68 Avijaan Roy Choudhury 1546 – 6
69 Soham Pal 1454 – 6
70 Soumma Chakraborty 1656 – 6
71 Soumya Banerjee 1904 – 6
72 Aneek Das 1584 – 6
73 Mandal Ardhendu 1533 – 6
74 Basant Khandelwal 1573 – 6
75 Bristy Mukherjee 1474 – 6
76 Soham Dey 1344 – 6
77 Tapas Chakraborty 1593 – 6
78 Aritra Ganguly 1550 – 6
79 Sounak De (1) 1486 – 6
80 Rahul Krishna Viswanathan 1577 – 6
81 AGM Shubham Shukla 1831 – 6
82 Prasenjit Bhattacharya 1502 – 6
83 Tushar Chatterjee 1850 – 6
84 Shetye Shyam 1778 – 6
85 Sanjay Ramkrishna Deo 1250 – 6
86 Sandip Dey 1791 – 5.5
87 Sanjiv Kumar 1840 – 5.5
88 Aditya Bikram Paul 1346 – 5.5
89 Deep Dutta 1644 – 5.5
90 Basak Bishal 1587 – 5.5
91 Chandan Kumar Prasad (jharkha 1395 – 5.5
92 Eshan Bhattacharjee 1125 – 5.5
93 Rachishnu Datta 1103 – 5.5
94 Rithwik Raaj Anand 1397 – 5.5
95 Bipra Nath 1304 – 5.5
96 Nitish Das 1807 – 5
97 Aniruddh Chatterjee 1307 – 5
98 Mouhurtik Ray 1185 – 5
99 AIM Debarghya Samanta 1455 – 5
100 Anish Rooj 1390 – 5
101 Sneha Paul 1255 – 5
102 Dhritabrata Kundu 1205 – 5
103 Shaunak Mallick 1149 – 5
104 Pratyay Chowdhury 1327 – 5
105 Swapan Chakraborty 1847 – 5
106 Rajanya Datta 1063 – 5
107 Subhabrata Roy 1251 – 5
108 Ayan Pal 1406 – 5
109 Vishal Pabari 0 – 5
110 Mohana Sengupta 1744 – 5
111 Homen Chandra Rabha 1529 – 5
112 Bishal Patowary 1313 – 5
113 Soumalya Mondol 0 – 5
114 Aritrya Pal 1070 – 5
115 Mandal Abhijit 1662 – 5
116 Aditya Prasad 1193 – 5
117 Aniket Mukherjee 1324 – 5
118 Raunit Mitra 1209 – 5
119 Sayan Sarkar 1196 – 5
120 Vedika Agarwal 1152 – 5
121 Rahul Saha 1113 – 5
122 Anubhav Sharma 1441 – 5
123 Sandip Debnath 1324 – 5
124 Urja Goyal 1200 – 5
125 Ashmit Paul 0 – 5
126 Ravishankar Vishvanath Gaure 0 – 5
127 Somdeb Mazumder 1188 – 4.5
128 Alekhya Mukhopadhyay 1402 – 4.5
129 Pratyush Das 1052 – 4.5
130 Shreeyash Kejriwal 1036 – 4.5
131 Prayash Adhikari 1009 – 4.5
132 Azmat Gowher Khan 1173 – 4.5
133 Prabhunath Sah 1541 – 4.5
134 Dhimani Maloo 1041 – 4.5
135 Harshit Baid 1147 – 4
136 Das Annika 1239 – 4
137 Uddipan Roy 1049 – 4
138 Avirup Das Neogi 1074 – 4
139 Sanika Sengupta 1180 – 4
140 Saikat Paul 1152 – 4
141 Sourav Kumar Roy (ali) 1195 – 4
142 Kriti Mundhra 1243 – 4
143 Pragati Mazumder 1038 – 4
144 Shreyashree Bansal 1137 – 4
145 Arya Dev 0 – 4
146 Juhi Parekh 1026 – 4
147 Arit Chakrobarty 1225 – 4
148 Koushik Pal 1091 – 4
149 Jagriti Agarwal 1063 – 4
150 Das Anissa 1128 – 4
151 Archisman Patra 1114 – 4
152 Ojash Jain 0 – 4
153 Swastik Roy 0 – 4
154 Swapan Kr Das Iol 1341 – 4
155 Swapnil Ghosh 0 – 4
156 Agradeep Halder 0 – 3.5
157 Shubhabrata Saha 0 – 3.5
158 Manosij Malakar 1024 – 3.5
159 Yug Desai 0 – 3.5
160 Vanij Agarwal 0 – 3.5
161 Arav Agrawal 0 – 3
162 Ishaan Poddar 1019 – 3
163 Jatin Agarwalla 1005 – 3
164 Saparya Ghosh 0 – 3
165 Kaushal Golchha 0 – 3
166 Aarav Mehta 0 – 3
167 Krishiv Vikram Agarwal 0 – 3
168 Alka Das 1842 – 2.5
169 Dhanuka Aman 0 – 2.5
170 Lateef Uz Zaman Shiekh 0 – 2.5
171 Aishani Nag 0 – 2.5
172 Arpan Das 1951 – 2
173 Dipyaman Mukherjee 0 – 2
174 Avyakt Agarwal 0 – 2
175 Garima Kanoria 0 – 2