Defending champion and Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly suffered a shocking defeat against International Master in waiting Himanshu Sharma in the 2nd round of 43rd National 'A' chess championship in Visakhapatnam [Images] on Tuesday.

On a day belonging to the new talented chess brigade, IM and Asian Junior champion S Arun Prasad came up with an inspired performance to beat GM Abhijit Kunte.

As if these two giant-killing acts were not enough, IM Deepan Chakravarthy downed former National 'B' Champion Sriram Jha with surprising ease and emerged as the joint leader on two points along with lone girl participant and GM Koneru Humpy and IM M R Venkatesh.

In the 32nd Women's 'A' championship being organised simultaneously, there were no such fireworks as the second round unfolded on an expected note.

The big battle between top seeded International Master S Vijayalakshmi and local talent D Harika ended in a draw. Woman Grandmaster Swati Ghate and Kiran Manisha Mohanty became early leaders here recording smooth second round victories over Amruta Mokal and I Aiswarya Shobhana respectively.

The action in the men's section produced some inspired performances from the younger lot.

Just at the start of the event Humpy had said she wanted to set the records right after her dismal show in the last world women's championship and it seems that the world's top rated girl wants her moves to do the talking here.

On the receiving end was Arghyadip Das who simply fell prey to some fine technical performance by the wily Andhra girl.

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