Vijay, Kunal share lead in Bihar state chess

Patna, August 31, 2010: Vijay Kumar of Bhojpur and Kunal of Postal shred joint lead at the end of the 4th round of the 42nd Bihar state chess championship at the Moinul Haq Stadium here.

Sanjiv Kumar of RBI, R K Chauhan of BSNL, Ashutosh Kumar of Patna and chess prodigy Gaurav Kumar of Purnea, were in joint second spot with 3.5 points each.

Rishi Shankar could not handle ‘Catalan opening’ properly and granted a slight plus to his vastly experienced opponent Kunal, who converted this advantage into a win in the end game.

Rising star from Bhojpur Vijay Kumar did not allow Rupesh Ranjan’s Knight to capture the vital ‘d-5’ square in a well-fought game of ‘Sicilian Pelikan’ and slowly penetrated opponent’s Kingside to score a full point.

Raj Kumar Chauhan demonstrated his skills of handling double-edged middle game position which arose out of ‘Queen’s Gambit’ and forced Vinay Kumar of Muzaffarpur to resign.

Ashutosh Kumar won in a tactical middle game against Abhay Kumar Sinha of Begusarai Chess Academy, who fell into a trap of ‘Ruy Lopez’. Gaurav Kumar sacrificed a knight to expose his opponent’s king in Sicilian defence’ and delivered a chess mate.

Stalwarts like Samir Kumar of Jehanabad, Suman Kumar Singh, Saurav Roop both from Patna, were sharing the third spot jointly with Mrityunjay Kumar Dubey of Rohtas, D V Singh of Munger, Sudhanshu Sarkar of Kishanganj, Vivek Rohan Sharma of Munger and Ajay Kumar Singh of West Champaran with 3 points each.

Rakesh Ranjan, Ramcharan, Menhajul Hoda (all Patna), Narayan Saha of Kishanganj, Rahul Kumar of Chapra, Veer Vikram of Munger, Saumitra Verma, Jitendra Kumar, Kamal Lochan Sahu (all Patna) and Abhishek Soni of Muzaffarpur were on the fourth spot with 2.5 points each.