VEDANT Srivastava of Thane in Open Group and Bhumika Waghale of Aurangabad in Girls Group have taken lead after five rounds with full five point to their credit in the Maharashtra State Under-9 Open and Girls Selection Chess Championship being organised by Chess Association Nagpur in association with the GH Raisoni Sports and Cultural Foundation and Kalpana Prakash Welfare Foundation at GH Raisoni Institute of Engineering and Technology, Shraddha Park.

 

The chess championship is being conducted to select Maharashtra players for representing Maharashtra in National Under-9 Chess Championship to be held later this year.

The tournament in the open group has taken an interesting mode as the top three seeds were defeated by their opponents in the earlier rounds.

Top seed Arjun Singh of Mumbai Suburban suffered defeat at the hands of his team-mate Avi Chugh in the second round. Second seed Advik Agrawal of Pune was toppled by Raghav Pawde of Pune in 4th Round and Vivan Kasliwal of Nashik in the fifth round.

Third seed Nirvaan Shah of Mumbai City was downed by Nagpur youngster Swaraj Mishra in third round.

Arav Dhoot of Nagpur, Swaraj Mishra of Nagpur and Vivan Kasliwal of Nashik are trailing the leader with 4.5 points to their credit.

 

In girls group, there were no major upsets as top seed Bhumika Waghale took the lead and is pitted with second seed Tvesha Jain of Mumbai City who is having 4.5 points after 5 rounds.

With enormous response to the event, the organisers have announced trophies for the prize winners from 11th to 20th position in both groups in addition to the trophies to top 10 finishers as announced earlier.

 

Prizes are also at stake for top 10 finishers in each group in the Under-7 category who will also be awarded medals.

Prize distribution ceremony will be held on Sunday. Prizes will be distributed at the hands of Sanjay Bangale, Prominent Social Worker and Dr Sharad Suryawanshi.

IA Deepak Chavan is Chief Arbiter and is assisted by Dy Chief Arbiter FA Shiva Iyer, FA Swati Kumbhalkar, FA Amit Tembhurne, SNA Shyam Agrawal, SNA Sagar Sakhare, SNA Prayas Ambade, Prathamesh Machave and Shishir Indurkar.