Vaibhav and Prince shine in Parsvnath Commonwealth Chess

NEW DELHI - Delhi youngsters Vaibhav Suri and Prince Bajaj brought cheer to the home crowd by holding fourth seed Russian Grandmaster Dmitry Kokarev and former national champion Abhijit Kunte in the third round of the ongoing Parsvnath Commonwealth Chess Championship at Clarks Inn, Pacific Mall, here Tuesday.

Playing with black pieces in Sicilian Defence, Kokarev agreed to sign the peace treaty with his younger rival in 39 moves while Prince Bajaj forced Kunte to split the point after 45 moves.

Meanwhile, top seed Alexey Dreev of Russia had another easy day in the office as he outwitted Ramnath Bhuvanesh in the third round outing while his Russian counterparts Dmitry Bocharov and Pavel Maletin beat G.A. Stany and Women Grandmaster Nisha Mohota, respectively.

In other results in the third round, Vikramjit Singh held third seed GM Anton Kovalyov of Argentina while International Master Anup Deshmukh held Kazak Grandmaster Rustam Khusnutidionov and International Master M.R. Lalith Babu satisfied with half point against G.B Joshi.

As many as 21 players including former world junior champion Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta, Grandmasters Sriram Jha and Tejas Bakre and International Masters Tania Sachdev and D. Harika are now leading the table with perfect scores.

Abhijeet and Jha beat Bangladesh Fide Masters Ahmed Minazuddin and Mehadi Hasan, respectively.

Tania and Harika got the better of Puneet Jaiswal and Prasenjit Dutta, respectively.

Earlier in the second round, Nagpur-based Gurpreet Singh Maras held Grandmaster Anton Kovalyov of Argentina to a creditable draw while Azerbaijan Grandmaster Eltaj Safarli had the same fate against Vikramjit Singh. Delhi youngsters Hemant Sharma and Prince Bajaj held Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte and International Master B. Adhiban, respectively.