Jamshedpur: Top players, including defending champion Soumitra Verma of Patna and runner-up Kaushlendra Kumar of Chapra, got off to winning starts as the seventh Jamshedpur leg of The Telegraph Schools’ Chess Championship began on Wednesday.

In all, 276 players (including 38 girls) from 33 Jharkhand and 11 Bihar schools are in the fray. There are 10 ELO-rated sub-junior category players.

Top-board results

Praveen Kumar bt Medhajeet Bagh; Mirza Shamim Baig lost to Soumitra Verma; Kaushlendra Kumar bt Mohit Udani; Monalisa Ghosh lost to Kumar Gaurav; Rama Kumari bt Mridul Manish; Naveen Kumar lost to Rupesh Ranjan; Shalini Srivastava bt Neel Chatterjee; Neeraj Jha lost to Priyanka Kumari; Kumar Sanu bt Nehal Sonkar; Nibriti Simran lost to Ankit Kumar Singh.