Abhijeet, Gujrathi champions

Abhijeet Gupta clinched the rapid title while Vidit Gujrathi emerged winner in the blitz section in the ChessMine Rapid and Blitz Open here on Monday. In the rapid, Abhijeet was held by the young FM Rathanvel VS of Tamilnadu in the fourth round, and suffered an unexpected upset at the hands of IM VAV Rajesh of Tamilnadu.

At 3.5/5, he looked pretty much out of contention. However, this brought out the best in him and he won the last five rounds on demand, among which three were IMs and one was against the prodigious Nihal Sarin to tie for the first place. It was reminiscent of Abhijeet’s World Junior 2008 victory.

At the end of 10 rounds, four players, Abhijeet, GN Gopal, Sai Krishna GV and Girish A Koushik, were tied for the first place with 8.5/10. Lots were drawn, and Abhijeet coasted to victory with a 2-0 victory over Girish, while Gopal bounced back superblyt from a first game defeat against Sai Krishna to equalize in the first tie-break.

He beat Sai Krishna 2-0 in the blitz to set up a thrilling final clash against Abhijeet. He won the first game, but Abhijeet bounced back to equalize, and took the trophy with a 1.5-0.5 win in the blitz tiebreaks.

Gujrathi was good during the rapids, he was a lot better in the blitz event. He went through the field like a surgical knife would go through the flesh.

He played fantastic chess and hardly made a blunder. He defeated 4 GM’s, including the two other 2600’s in the event, Abhijeet and S P Sethuraman, to finish with a commendable 10 points from 11 games.