Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s Sidhant Mohapatra and Utkal Ranjan Sahoo registered convincing victories in their respective campaign-openers at the Kolkata International Open Grandmasters chess tournament, Monday.
Sidhant defeated his West Bengal opponent Utsab Chatterjee while Utkal outplayed Nityata Jain of Madhya Pradesh to bag one point each after the opening round of the nine-day meet.
Among other Odisha players, Rajesh Nayak, Sambit Panda and Mahitosh Dey played out stalemates with their respective opponents.
Rajesh drew with Souhardo Basak of West Bengal while Sambit and Mahitosh shared points with Kerala’s Nihal Sarin and Somak Palit (Railways), respectively. The state trio has now 0.5 points apiece in their kitty.
English Grandmaster D Nigel Short was leading the chart after beating his Bangladeshi opponent Mehdi Hasan Parag. Indian Grandmasters Abhijeet Gupta and Murali Karthikeyan were second and third respectively.
Participants named
Three teams, namely Sports Hostel of Kalinga Stadium, Jajpur’s Kalinga Nagar Sports Academy (KNSA) and Cuttack’s FAO Academy – from Odisha will participate in the AIFF Youth League, announced the Football Association of Odisha (FAO) Tuesday.
AIFF technical administration head Pushpargha Chattopadhyay is on a visit to inspect the facilities available with selected three teams. He has inspected KNSA and FAO Academy Tuesday. Notably, he had visited the Sports Hostel here Monday.
FAO secretary Sanjay Behera has said that more teams will feature in the Youth League, which will be played in various age categories, in future. Notably, Sports Hostel were the only state team to participate in the tournament last year. However, the number has increased to three this year.
