Arpan Das wins 2nd Dalmia Cements All India Open FIDE Rating Chess Tournament 2018

by Shahid Ahmed - 25/04/2018

Arpan Das scored 8.5/10 and won 2nd Dalmia Cements All India FIDE Rating Chess Tournament 2018. He defeated GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury of RSPB in the last round with Black pieces in a must-win situation, won the tournament. There was a six-way tie at 8 points a piece. CM Aronyak Ghosh finished at 2nd position due to a better tie-break score. Kaustuv Kundu and Shrutarshi Ray secured 3rd and 4th position respectively. Top seed IM Arghyadip Das finished at 5th position. Among local players, Priyanka Kumari of Jharkhand finished at 6th position with 7.5 points. We have a detailed report with photos, videos and annotated game by the champion, Arpan Das himself. Photo: Neeraj Kumar Mishra

Arpan Das pulls off a photo finish in the last round and wins the tournament out of nowhere

Arpan Das receives the champion's trophy, flower bouquet and ₹50000 cash | Photo: Neeraj Kumar Mishra

Despite not being in the championship fray until the last round, Arpan Das managed to predict his opponent's choice of opening properly and with a correct play, he got lucky (as per his annotations) and managed to win the game as well as the tournament. Here is his final round game against GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury, the only GM who took part in the tournament, annotated by the champion himself:

CM Aronyak Ghosh scored 8.0/10 and finished at 2nd position due to a better tie-break score. He bagged home ₹30000 cash | Photo: Mrinal Ghosh

Kaustuv Kundu also scored 8.0/10 and was placed 3rd. He got richer by ₹20000 cash | Photo: Nongsha Angom

Shrutarshi Ray secured 4th position with a score of 8.0/10 and he won ₹10000 cash | Photo: Neeraj Kumar Mishra

Top seed GM-elect IM Arghyadip Das scored 8.0/10 and claimed 5th position. He won ₹10000 cash | Photo: Amruta Mokal

The tournament was organized by All Jharkhand Chess Association and the venue was Sarala Birla Public School, Ranchi. It went on from 26th to 31st March 2018. The tournament director was IM Neeraj Kumar Mishra. Over 200 players across more than 10 different states and contingencies participated in this event.

Final Ranking after 10 Rounds

Rk.	SNo		Name	FED	Rtg	Club/City	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	5		Arpan Das	IND	2166	WB	8,5	0,0	59,5	63,5
2	4	CM	Aronyak Ghosh	IND	2286	WB	8,0	0,0	66,5	72,0
3	2		Kaustuv Kundu	IND	2352	WB	8,0	0,0	64,0	69,0
4	6		Shrutarshi Ray	IND	1984	WB	8,0	0,0	63,5	67,0
5	1	IM	Das Arghyadip	IND	2444	WB	8,0	0,0	63,0	65,0
6	7		Priyanka Kumari	IND	1972	JHAR	8,0	0,0	62,0	67,5
7	18		Routray Priyanka	IND	1616	ODI	8,0	0,0	56,5	61,0
8	3	GM	Roy Chowdhury Saptarshi	IND	2342	RSPB	7,5	0,0	68,0	71,0
9	12		Chakrabarti Tamal	IND	1731	WB	7,5	0,0	61,5	64,0
10	11		Rupam Mukherjee	IND	1757	WB	7,5	0,0	59,5	63,5
11	20		Biswal Sagar	IND	1569	ODI	7,5	0,0	57,0	61,0
12	8		Verma Sanjay	IND	1873	SE Rly	7,0	0,0	64,5	70,5
13	17		Mohanty Soyamsree	IND	1622	ODI	7,0	0,0	61,5	66,0
14	30		Siddhant Nath Jha	IND	1479	HAR	7,0	0,0	61,0	65,5
15	14		Kamal Kishore Debnath	IND	1707	S E RLY	7,0	0,0	60,5	64,0

Complete standings