Former National Junior Champion Abhjit Gupta, a 14-year-old boy from Bhilwara, created a major stir by holding top seed and highly regarded Grandmaster Nigel Short of England in the second round of Commonwealth chess championship at Mumbai on Sunday.

International Master C S Gokhale did well to hold fifth seed GM Alexander Fominyh of Russia to a draw and so did IM Sudhakar Babu who drew with Stuart Conquest of England.

After the conclusion of the second round at the Mirador, only six players could boast of a cent per cent score and this can be attributed to the Accelerated Pairing system that is in use.

The leaders are GMs Krishnan Sasikiran, Pavel Smirnov of  Russia, P Harikrishna, National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly, International Women Master Dronavalli Harika and George Michel of South Africa.

The hero of the day certainly was Abhijit Gupta who held mighty Short. It was a Nimzo Indian defence where Gupta just stuck to basics while at the same time played prophylactic moves with white pieces.

Up against the Capablanca variation Short succeeded in winning a pawn on the edge of the board but that gave Gupta just enough time to coordinate his pieces.

A timely piece sacrifice by the Indian later simplified the position to a great extent and the draw was agreed to after 40 moves.

Gupta's fine form thus continued. The former age-group world champion had only recently made his maiden IM norm in the Parsvnath International open at New Delhi in October and is now well poised to make his second norm.

Second seed Krishnan Sasikiran gave an emphatic display to beat M R Venkatesh, his Chennai city-mate and PSPB colleague from the white side of another Nimzo Indian of the day. Sasikiran got what looked like a complicated middle game but made things simpler through a fine piece sacrifice that ripped open the opponent's king side. Even the best defence thereafter did not prove sufficient.

Harikrishna scored a fluent victory over IM Dinesh Kumar Sharma who played black. The Catalan opening has served Harikrishna well and held him in good stead yet again as Sharma found himself helpless against dominating white forces in the middle game. Harikrishna won an exchange for effectively no compensation and Sharma resigned on move 24.

Important Results round 2 (Indians unless specified):
Abhijit Gupta (1.5) drew Nigel Short (1.5, Eng); K Sasikiran (2) beat M R Venkatesh (1); Himanshu Sharma (1) lost to Pavel Smirnov (2); P Harikrishna (2) beat D K Sharma (1); C S Gokhale (1.5) drew Alexander Fominyh (1.5, Rus); N Sudhakar Babu (1.5) drew Stuart Conquest (1.5, Eng); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2) beat R R Laxman (1); D Harika (2) beat S Vijayalakshmi (1); Sergey Iskusnyh (1.5, Rus) drew K Ratnakaran (1); George Michelakis (2, Saf) beat S C Sahu (1); S R Mishra (1.5) drew Safin Shukhrat (1, Uzb); Saidali Iuldachev (1.5, Uzb) beat Majuwana Kankanamge (1, Sri); Sandipan Chanda (1.5) beat Anupama Gokhale (1); S G Joshi (1) lost to Tahir Vakhidov (1.5, Uzb); Abhijit Kunte (1.5) beat Vikas Sharma (1); Roy Phillips (1, Mau) lost to R B Ramesh (1.5); Laubscher Anzel (1, Saf) lost to Pravin Thipsay (1.5); Neelotpal Das (1.5) beat Vivek Nambiar (1); Tejas Bakre (1.5) beat S Sai Krishna (1)S Kidambi (1.5) beat Yashodhan Gogate; Meghan Gupte (1) lost to Sriram Jha (1.5); S Roy Chowdhury (1.5) beat Y Sandeep (1); P Priya (1) lost to Niaz Murshed (1.5, Ban); C N Vaidya (1) lost to D V Prasad (1.5); H Venkatesh (1.5) drew Rahul Shetty (1); Varugeese Koshy (1.5) beat N Vinuthana (1).