SBI Life All-Maharashtra FIDE Rating Chess Tournament
National ‘B’ champion and second seed FM Avinash Awate dropped a point as he was held to a draw by 16th seed Rajesh Gupta in a fourth round match of the Rs.1.50 lakhs prize-money SBI Life All-Maharashtra FIDE Rating Chess Tournament, which commenced at the Don Bosco High School, Borivali on Friday.
Gupta (ELO1685) put up an impressive display and matches his illustrious rival Awate (ELO 2135) to force a draw and a division of the point.
In another tightly contested match, young Muktesh Raghavan (ELO 1580) put up a strong performance against Shubham Kumthekar (ELO 1945) to steer the game to a draw while Ankit Bhattacharya (ELO 1447) defeated Vedant Panesar (ELO 1849) who was rated nearly 400 points above him.
At the end of the fourth round, four players jointly share the lead. Top seed IM Vikramaditya Kulkarni, Chirag Satkar, Ketan Boricha and Rajababu Gajengi, all having won all their matches now tally 4 points each.
A further group of 8-players are trailing the leaders by half-a-point, which includes FM Avinash Awate, Amardeep Bartakke, Pratik Shenvi, Rajesh Gupta, Ravindra Nargundkar, Ankit Bhattacharya, Yash Kapadi and Aditya Bandekar.
Five more remains to be played over 3-days in this tournament.