Jamshedpur, Oct 14: Pritam Singh of Jharkhand created a major stir upsetting Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly in the second round of the Tata International Open chess tournament here today. It turned out to be a difficult day for many seeded players who were either shocked or held by their lesser-known opponents on the second day of the competition.
Vinod Bhagwat played brilliantly to hold top seed Grandmaster Dmitry Svetushkin of Moldova which was followed by Pritam Singh's victory. Later, Laltu Chatterjee held British champion Abhijit Kunte.
Top player P Harikrishna, however, managed to win his board against unheralded T J Sureshkumar.
The hero of the second round undoubtedly was Pritam Singh who came back from a hopeless position to record the biggest victory of his career.
Not a regular player these days, Pritam was obviously not well versed with the main variation of the English opening that he opted for against Ganguly who played black.
The result was a pawn less middle game and an inferior end game for Pritam who apparently had his fingers crossed.
However Ganguly erred, blundered and eventually lost a handful of pawns to finally resign when Pritam threatened to queen his passed pawn on the kingside.
Bureau Report