Dhopade joins lead bunch after round two at chess meet

Grand Master-elect Swapnil S Dhopade of Maharashtra, along with top seed and state mate Shardul Gagare, led the field along with several others after the second round of the IIFL Wealth Mumbai International Open Chess Tournament held here today.
Top-seeded Gagare exploited the back rank weakness of Sankarsha Shelke effectively, wrapping the point in 27 moves.
Sharing the lead with the Maharashtra duo at 2 points apiece were International Masters Stany G.A., Himanshu Sharma, Vikramaditya Kulkarni, Nitin S and Akshat Khamparia.
In the day's upsets, International Masters, S Ravi Teja and Dinesh Sharma shed half points to Manush Shah and Ojas Kulkarni respectively.

In the International Juniors event, that began late last evening, top seeded FIDE Master Mohammad Fahad Rahman of Bangladesh had an easy first round with a quick win over Kriish Mehta.
Other seeded players Sadhwani Raunak, Sankalp Gupta, D Gukesh, Aditya Mittal and Luke Mendonca scored equally easy victories.
Important and Indian results, Round 3 (Indians unless
specified): Hikaru Nakamura (Usa, 2.5) drew with Grigoriy Oparin (Rus, 2.5); Aryan Tari (Nor, 2) lost to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 3); Dmitry Jakovenko (Rus, 3) beat Alexandra Kosteniuk (Rus, 3); M R Lalith Babu (2.5) drew with Radoslav Wojtaszek (Pol, 2.5); Richard Rapport (Hun, 3) beat Al-Sayed Mohammed (Qat, 2); V Vishnu Prasanna (2) lost to Markus Ragger (Aut, 3); Nigel Short (Eng, 2) lost to D Harika (3); S Kidambi (2.5) drew with Bruzon Batista Lazaro (Cub, 2.5); S P Sethuraman (3) beat Bai Jinshi (Chn, 2); Bela Khotenashvili (Geo, 2.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (2.5); Aravindh Chithambaram (3) beat Sandipan Chanda (2); Anurag Mhamal (2.5) drew with Igarza Renier Vazquez (Esp, 2.5); V Anand (2.5) beat Xu Xiangyu (Chn, 1.5); Fabien Libiszewski (Fra, 1.5) lost to P Harikrishna (2.5); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2.5) beat Dmitrij Kollars (Ger, 1.5); Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (2) drew with Almagro Llamas Pablo (Esp, 2); Padmini Rout (2) drew with Axel Bachmann (Par, 2); Pavel Tregubov (Rus, 2.5) beat S Satyapragyan (1.5); G N Gopal (2.5) beat David Martin Martinez (Esp, 1.5); Prasanna Rao (2) beat Rolf Bergstrom (Swe, 1); Pratyusha Bodda (1.5) drew with Miklos Galyas (Hun, 1.5); Pontus Carlsson (Swe, 1.5) drew with Nisha Mohota (1.5); Siva Mahadevan (2) beat Gerben Veltkamp (Ned, 1).