Sahaj won the National Junior Championship

Sahaj Grover

India’s newest Grandmaster Sahaj Grover of Delhi won the National Junior Chess Championship defeating overnight sole leader Debashish Das of Orissa in the 11th and final round that concluded at Ajmer.

Grover, who turned 17 during the course of the championship, delivered when it mattered the most as Das was no match for the wily ways of his younger opponent. This victory for Grover comes soon after the completion of his Grandmaster title at the World Junior chess championship at Athens in Greece.

For the records, Grover scored 8.5 points in all and ended up half a point ahead of nearest rivals N Srinath, Vidit Gujarathi, Debashish Das, Anurag Mahamal, Dipptayan Ghosh and G A Stany who all scored eight points in all.

Grover lost one game, won seven and drew the remaining three. The loss against International Master Aditya Udeshi was heartbreaking in the fourth round but the Delhi-boy staged a remarkable comeback upstaging Das in the last round.

It was the game of the tournament wherein Grover launched an offence very early from a queen pawn opening as white and ripped apart the centre with a brilliant knight sacrifice. Das was at sea trying to figure out an escape route but there was none as the postmortem of the game confirmed. Grover paralysed black’s forces in no time and forced Das to resign.

“This has been a decent result after I was going haywire midway through the tournament, even before the last round I was not sure if I would win the championship despite winning the last round, it was possible only thanks to some positive results for me on other boards”, said Grover matter-of-factly after winning the title.

The student of Kulachi Hansraj Model School singled out his game against Das as his best effort, “The way I had been playing before the last round I was not convinced with myself, but then I had analysed this line for some time and when Debashish (Das) went for it, I knew it would be at least a keen tussle. And then it just went my way”, Grover noted.

A former under-10 world champion, Grover is also a bronze medalist in the 2011 world junior championship.