R SAILESH of Tamil Nadu, Shaon Chowdhary and Rupam Mukherjee of West Bengal, and Salil Kumar of Kerala are leading the tables with 5 points to their credit at the end of five rounds of 19th GH Raisoni Memorial International FIDE Classical Rating Chess Tournament in progress at GH Raisoni Institute of Information and Technology, Shraddha Park, Wadi. The tournament is being organised by GH Raisoni Sports and Cultural Foundation jointly with Kalpana Prakash Welfare Foundation and is recognised by the Chess Association Nagpur, Maharashtra Chess Association, All India Chess Federation and FIDE. In the fifth round, on top board, Sailesh accounted for AFM Abhiram Vaddi of Andhra Pradesh.

 

It was not a good day for Nagpur youngsters as Jay Sawalakhe lost to Chowdhary. Another local star Suhan Deshpande lost to Mukherjee. In a lengthy game of over 60 moves, Vishwaditya Awasthi, also of Nagpur, went down against Salil. The race for taking sole lead in the event is gearing up. Seven players namely — Kishan Kumar, Pradeep Tiwari, Nilay Kulkarni, Ameya Godbole, Yogarth Narule, Aashi Upadhyaya and Prathma Gupta are following the leaders with 4½ points to their credit. There are 11 rounds to be played in the event which will be played till June 12. As many as 314 players from all over the country are participating in the tournament for top prize of Rs 41000. IA Ajinkya Pingle is the Chief Arbiter and is being assisted by Deputy Chief Arbiter IA Shiva Iyer, FA Amit Tembhurne, FA Bharati Dhote, SNA Sham Agrawal, SNA Akash Rewatkar, SNA Sagar Sakhare, SNA Prayas Ambade and SNA Shishir Indurkar.