SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 10 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

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SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following about the 61st National Chess Championship is/are correct? 1.) GM Karthik Venkataraman won in Gurgaon and got ₹6 lakh. 2.) IM Neelash Saha finished 2nd but lost due to a tiebreak game vs Ganguly.

(a)Only 1
(b)Only 2
(c)Both 1 and 2 are correct
(d)Neither 1 nor 2 is correct

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Statement 1 holds. The 61st National Chess Championship was played at RPS International School in Gurugram, the stem's Gurgaon, and GM Karthik Venkataraman won it. The top prize was ₹6 lakh.

Statement 2 fails. Karthik, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Neelash Saha all scored 9 out of 11, and the tie was broken on Buchholz score, not by a tiebreak game. Ganguly finished second and Saha third, so option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Only 2 — Statement 2 is the false one. Neelash Saha finished third, behind Ganguly, and no tiebreak game was played: the three-way tie on 9 points was settled by Buchholz score.
(c)
Both 1 and 2 are correct — Both cannot stand, because statement 2 misplaces Saha. The final order was Karthik, Ganguly, Saha, all on 9 points and separated by Buchholz.
(d)
Neither 1 nor 2 is correct — Statement 1 is accurate. Karthik won the title in Gurugram, and the first prize announced for the championship was ₹6,00,000.

Concept

When players finish level in a Swiss tournament, the order can be settled by a tie-break score worked out from games already played, rather than by an extra game.

The Buchholz score adds up the points of a player's opponents, rewarding the player who met stronger opposition.

At Gurugram, Karthik's Buchholz was 78 against Ganguly's 77.5. That decided the title after Karthik beat Mitrabha Guha in the last round and Ganguly drew with Himal Gusain.

Key facts

The 61st National Chess Championship was held at RPS International School, Gurugram, Haryana, in August 2024.
Karthik Venkataraman, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Neelash Saha all scored 9 out of 11.
The tie was broken by Buchholz score: Karthik 78, Ganguly 77.5, with Saha third.
The top three prizes were ₹6 lakh, ₹5 lakh and ₹4 lakh.

Study next

Swiss-system tournaments and tie-break methods such as BuchholzIndia's recent national and world chess championsFIDE titles: GM, IM and WGM

Common traps

Assuming a three-way tie must be settled by extra games.
Accepting 'finished 2nd' because Saha was level on points with the top two.

Here a championship result is split into statements, each packing several facts that must all be right.

Chess also appears at 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.5, which asks at which championship in Almaty Koneru Humpy won silver (keyed World Blitz Chess Championship).

Related PYQs

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Topic: Current events — all 156 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.