City prodigy Dev Shah bagged the silver medal in the Under-9 national age-group chess championships that concluded in Jalandhar on Tuesday.
This reigning Under-9 Maharashtra state champion & former world schools chess champion narrowly missed the gold in a nerve biting tie-breaker with Sahil Dey of Assam after both had identical scores of 9.5 points each at the end of 11 rounds.
In the tournament that saw 157 boys from all over the country participate, Shah, a Class 2 student of Dhirubhai Ambani School, caused the biggest upset. He stunned top seed Bharath Subrahmanyam of Chennai, the reigning U-8 world youth champion who eventually finished third.
This was Shah's second silver medal at the national age-group championships following the one in the U-7 category in Kolkata in 2014.
Shah's coach at SMCA, DV Ganesh, exuded confidence by saying that the youngster had the potential to make a mark in this game and he will certainly become a GM.
Up next for Shah is the world youth cadets chess championships to be held in Georgia next month.
