NAGPUR will soon get its second chess Grandmaster. City’s third International Master (IM) Sankalp Gupta completed his second GM norm and moved closer to becoming India’s latest Grandmaster. Gupta has been in sublime form and has performed extremely well in the ongoing chess tourney in Serbia. A week after taking clearing the first hurdle on his way to becoming GM last week, Gupta came up with another good show in his second successive attempt. Apart from that, Gupta went on to win the international rating round-robin GM tournament by finishing on top of the table collecting seven points. In the nine-round event, Gupta recorded six victories, drew boards and lost just one game giving a performance rating of 2599. Gupta earned as many as 17.3 Elo points and fulfilled the criteria of nine-game GM norm set by the International Chess Federation (Fide). In an earlier tournament where he achieved his first GM norm, Gupta had earned 21.8 points.

 

He amassed a total of 39.1 points in back-to-back tournaments and his present live rating is 2,485. Gupta is now 15 Elo away from fulfilling the fourth criteria of becoming city’s second GM. To achieve the GM title, a player is required to achieve three norms and cross the live rating of 2500 Elo points. “This was more difficult, and thus more satisfying. I lost the fourth game in a very silly way, missed the opponent’s seventh move and was losing a piece. From there I needed 4.5 points from five rounds and managed. It feels good to get closer, I am onto the next tournament now,” Gupta said after the win. Gupta started the tourney with an easy win. He beat Shantanu Bhambure in the opening round but split the point with Indian IM Moksh Amit Doshi. He fought back to take one full point against unseeded Kunal M but went down in the fourth round to GM Damljanovic Branko of Serbia.

 

The loss notwithstanding, Gupta remained positive and fought his way back with two quick victories. After getting past WIM Harshita Guddanti, Gupta stunned Serbian 2484 Elo GM Tadic Branko before eking out a draw against GM Kosic Dragan from Montenegro. He was two points away from achieving the target of scoring seven points in nine rounds for the norm. In the remaining two rounds, a focused looking Gupta posted twin wins over Ritviz Parab and Bulgarian IM Petkov Momchil to get what he desired. City has just one GM in Raunak Sadhwani who achieved the title becoming youngest from Maharashtra achieve that norm.