Team Herald
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PANJIM: Goa’s Sairaj Vernekar, Audi Ameya and Shreya Patil brought laurels to the State excelling at the 12th Candor all-India open fide rated chess tournament, held in Bangalore, on Tuesday.
Ameya finished way ahead of the titled players, and remained undefeated to tally 8.5 out of nine rounds to win the tournament.
Ameya beat IM Hegde Ravi Gopal of Karnataka, AIM Shashank Bhat, Karthik P M, Aarvi Jain of Karnataka, AGM Rathneesh R of TN, Ishwar Ramteke of Maharashtra, Kalur Nikhil of Telangana while he drew with Wajih Nassir of Delhi.
In the final round, Ameya, who was the 12th seeded player of the tournament, was pitted against Manigandan S S of Tamil Nadu.
Ameya went beyond 4 hours, and 55 moves, to emerge the winner.
Sairaj Vernekar won the U-9 boys category while Shreya Patil won the U-7 girls category.
Audi Saiesh won the fourth place in U-15 boys category.
Earlier, Ameya had participated in the 6th Keshabananda Das all India open fide rated chess tourney, held at Bubaneshwar recently.
Ameya won 7.5 out of 9 rounds and remained unbeaten. He drew with GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury and IM Suvrajit Saha of West Bengal, A l Muthiah of TN. Ameya beat CM Sahil Dey (WB), Balasubramaniam H (TN), Mohanty Aditya , Chandan Samantray , Mansih Kumar, and Nayak Sunil Kumar (Odisha).
Ameya won the second place, but had to settle for fourth place in the tie-breaker.
