Chess: Commonwealth Chess Championship 2019 |09 July 2019

Hoareau (left) and Arfan at the 2019 Commonwealth Chess Championship

Hoareau finishes 83rd, Arfan takes 47th place

Candidate Master Benjamin Hoareau has been ranked 83rd out of 94 players at the just-ended 2019 Commonwealth Chess Championship which took place at the Leela Ambience Convention Hotel in Delhi, India.

He finished with three points after nine rounds of matches which ended on Sunday.

The winner is Grand Master Abhijeet Gupta of India and he scored 7.5 points out of nine rounds to finish half a point ahead of the remaining field.

In fact, favourite Abhijeet Gupta claimed his fifth title as India swept medals in all 16 sections of the championship.

After two other leaders, S. L. Narayanan and Aravindh Chithambaram, drew their top board battle in 32 moves, Abhijeet caught Arjun Erigaisi in a checkmating net in 39 moves to reach 7.5 points.

Aravindh topped a three-way tie for the second spot with Swapnil Dhopade and Narayanan at seven points.

Mohamed Arfan was Seychelles’ other representative at the tournament and he competed in the under-14 category. He was ranked 47th out of 48 players.

This category was won by Srihari L R with six points after seven rounds of matches.

Tania Sachdev retained the women’s title after an anxious wait. After being tied at six points with Divya Deshmukh, Tania took the title on superior tie-break score. Bhakti Kulkarni came out third.

The tournament was hosted by the Delhi Chess Association under the aegis of the All India Chess Federation (AICF), on behalf of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) and the Commonwealth Chess Association.

G. G.