Swapnil Shah is champion

MUMBAI, JUNE 9 .Top seed Swapnil Shah of Maharashtra today crowned himself as the king at the end of the final round of the global telesystems National B chess championship organised by the All India Chess Federation for the blind at the Andheri sports complex here.

He finished the tournament with 6.5 points out of a possible 8, and half a point clear of his nearest rivals. He had five wins and three draws.

Shobha Lokhande, also of Maharashtra, emerged as the national women's champion amongst the blind. She played exceedingly well to score a very creditable 5.5 points out of 8 in a strong men's field.

The tournament had the men and the women playing against each other, with the woman scoring the highest points being declared the national champion.

There were 12 players who tied for the second spot with 6 points each. However, Gaurav Gadodie, Suryakant Raut, Sanjay Karandikar (all Mah), N. Siddaiya (AP), S. Pandiyarajan (TN), P. Balraman (Ker), Rajesh Rajpur (Guj), Vasant Patil (Mah) and Mahipal Singh (Haryana) finished among the top ten in that order on the basis of progressive scores.

These nine players and Swapnil Shah therefore qualified to play in the National A championships where they will be joined by last year's top four-Vilesh Patil, Madan Bagayatkar, Charudatta Jadhav and Shirish Patil. The National A will be conducted in October on a round-robin basis.

The results: (Final round): Swapnil Shah (Mah) (6.5) drew with Mahipal Singh (Har) (6); Suryakant Raut (Mah) (6) drew with Sanjay Karandikar; (Mah) (6), Vasant Patil (Mah) (6) drew with N. Siddaiya (AP) (6); P. Balraman (Ker) drew with Gaurav Gadodia (Mah) (6); S. Pandyarajan (TN) (6) bt Vijay Gauli (Mah) (5); Chirantan Mesariya (Guj) (5) lost to Rajesh Rajput (Guj) (6) ; Puran Singh (Har) (5) lost to Promod Mistri (Mah) (6); Maulik Tripathi (Guj) (6) bt Samuel Manohar (TN) (5); Ibrahim Ingar (Guj) (5) drew with Eknath Sawant (Mah) (5); Rajesh Ojha (Mah) (4.5) lost to Dinesh Kumar (Har) (5.5).

- PTI

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