Bhubaneswar: Odisha Grandmaster Debashis Das maintained his position at the top with four others after defeating his higher-ranked Vietnamese opponent GM Nguyen Van Huy in a seventh round match of the XIth KIIT International Chess Festival here, Tuesday. He now has six points in his kitty.
Earlier Debashis had slipped to second spot with a draw against D Gukesh of Andhra Pradesh in his sixth round match, but came back strongly in the seventh to go on top of the leader board.
Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (five points) was the second best state player in the points table with five. He defeated Aryamann Sain of West Bengal on the day.
Among other state players, Sidhant Mohapatra, Susobhit Das and Kiran Manisha Mohanty were in joint fourth position with 4.5 points each. Sidhant defeated Indrajeet Mahindrakar (Maharashtra) while Susobhit won the all-Odisha affair against Baivab Mishra (3.5 points). Kiran Manisha got the better of her Bangladeshi opponent Jodunath Biswas.
Sekhar Chandra Sahu defeated West Bengal’s Ambarish Sharma while Sambit Panda lost to S Nitin (Railways). Rajesh Nayak and Manish Kumar played out stalemates against their respective opponents.
It was a bad day in office for Saina Salonika (3.5) who lost her match to Ashutosh Kumar (Bihar). She is currently in joint sixth position with statemates Harshit Ranjan Sahu (3.5) who drew with Vedant Pimpalkhare (Maharashtra) and Baivab, and a few others.
Other results (Odisha players): Smaraki Mohanty (3) lost to Kalyan Barath (TN); Sradhanjali Jena (3) bt Subhendu Kumar Patra (2); Ansuman Samal (3) lost to Arnav Maheshwari (TN); Soundarya Kumar Pradhan (Visually-impaired) (2.5) lost to Md Abzid Rahman (Bangladesh); Dikshant Das (2.5) lost to S Rohit (TN); Prachurya Kumar Pradhan (Visually-impaired) (2.5) bt Zarin Tasnim Kazi (Bangladesh); Saswat Mallick (2) lost to Aditya Varun Gampa (Telangana); Yashita Rout (1) lost to N Palash Chandan (Maharashtra).