AFTER athletics and badminton, the game of 64 squares is making Nagpur proud. Teenage chess players of the city are achieving titles and norms frequently now a days. After Raunak Sadhwani, who became first Grandmaster from Nagpur and Divya Deshmukh’s Woman Grandmasters’ title a few days back, another promising chess player International Master Sankalp Gupta inched closer to fulfilling his dream of becoming a GM. On Thursday, Sankalp earned his maiden Grandmaster norm after he earned the required rating points in the GM ASK 1 Chess Competition at Serbia. Starting as the 10th seed, Sankalp registered some fluent victories and stunning results and is sitting at the second spot behind compatriot Iniyan P in the 11 round competition.

 

Sankalp is currently performing at 2734 and gaining 24.8 Elo rating points. Sankalp, 17, is playing his fourth Over The Board Competition and used all his experience in securing seven points from nine rounds. he continued his fine form after clinching his maiden International Rating tournament in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “I am very happy with my first GM norm. I will be playing a couple of tournaments in Serbia and Spain and try to get the remaining norms,” Sankalp told ‘The Hitavada’. During the competition, Sankalp registered five straight wins over FM Acor Corey of the US, GM Damljanovic Branko of Serbia, Bosnian GM Emir Dizdarevic, Indian Ritviz Parab and Russian IM Makarian Rudik. His winning run was stalled by Montenegro’s GM Kosic Dragan who played out a draw. Sankalp bounced back as he defeated compatriot Raahul V S in the seventh round and remained in contention.

 

With the seventh round win, he needed only a draw to earn his first GM norm. The Dr Ambedkar College student of commerce faculty did well to split point with Indian Shantanu Bhambure and achieved his first goal. His first defeat of the competition came against compatriot P Iniyan. In the last two rounds Sankalp will be playing against IM S Nitin and WIM Harshita Guddanti.