Ramesh looks ready to break jinx

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 7. R.B. Ramesh is seeking qualification to the National `A' far more desperately than most other aspirants. As the favourite in the previous two National `B' chess championship, this Indian Oil man had run out of fuel when it really mattered. But in this edition, the top seed looks ready to break the jinx.

Ramesh, who had surprisingly dropped 1.5 points by the third round, continued to resurrect his fortune with a vital victory over Chennai-mate M.R. Venkatesh and jumped to the joint second- place with 8.5 points each after 11 rounds.

Of the 16 players at 7.5 points, fifth seeded Woman Grandmaster S. Vijayalakshmi survived certain defeat at the hands of Vedant Goswami and escaped with a draw to keep alive her slender hopes of make the qualifying pack of 12.

The results: 11th round: Swati Ghate (8.5) drew with Sriram Jha (9); G. B. Prakash (8) drew with P. Magesh Chandran (8.5); R. B. Ramesh (8.5) bt M. R. Venkatesh (7.5); Kiran Panditrao (8) drew with S. Satyapragyan (8); N. Sudhakar Babu (8) drew with Vishal Sareen (8); N. Sanjay (8.5) bt Prathamesh Mokal (7.5); C. S. Gokhale (8.5) bt Neelotpal Das (7); Shankar Roy (7.5) drew with V. Saravanan (7.5); Vedant Goswami (7.5) drew with S. Vijayalakshmi (7.5); S. Kidambi (8) bt B. S. Shivananda (7); Ravi Kumar (7) lost to Dinesh Sharma (8); Lanka Ravi (8) bt D. P. Singh (7); Gurpreet Pal Singh (7.5) drew with Varugeese Koshy (7.5); Vikramaditya Kamble (8) bt B. T. Murali Krishnan (7); K. Ratnakaran (7) lost to Suvrajit Saha (8); Sandipan Chanda (7.5) bt Anupama Gokhale (6.5); Arghyadip Das (6.5) lost to Atanu Lahiri (7.5); T. S. Ravi (7.5) bt Ketan Boricha (6.5); Satchidanand Soman (7.5) bt Manthan Chokshi (6.5); Amardeep Bartakke (7.5) bt K. V. Shantaram (6.5); Prasenjit Dutta (7) drew with Pankaj Joshi (7); Roktim Bandopadhyaya (7.5) bt S. Ram Krishnan (6.5); S. K. Rathod (7) drew with Anirban Guha Roy (7); Rohan Shandilya (7.5) bt Saurabh Kherdekar (6.5); G. C. Mohapatra (6.5) lost to Preetham Sharma (7.5); N. Neelkanthan (6.5) drew with Sekhar Sahu (6.5); Jayant Gokhale (6) lost to M. K. Panigrahi (7); Rahul Shetty (7) bt Virender Singh Negi (6); Saptarishi Roy (6.5) drew with Deep Sengupta (6.5); Nirav Rajasuba (7) bt T. V. Karthikeyan (6); R.M. Dongre (6) lost to Deepan Chakravarthi (7); Shashikant Kutwal (6.5) drew with Siddharth (6.5); Pradip Ghosh (7) bt Ashwani Tiwari (6); Nisha Mohota (6.5) drew with Ajay Pandey (6.5); R. Bala Subramanium (7) bt Dilip Pagey (6); Santosh Kumar Sinha (6) lost to M. Srinivasa Rao (7); J. Ramkrishna (6) lost to Vikrant Chole (7); P. Rajesh (6) lost to Manish Joshi (7); Y. Kalyan Kumar (6) lost to Manoj Mishra (7); Praveen Saxena (6) lost to Pramod Kumar Singh (7); Poobesh Anand (6) drew with Nassir Wajih (6); Pranjal Das (6) drew with Sharad Tilak (6); R. S. Gupta (6.5) bt Nikhilesh Kumar (5.5); Tania Sachdev (6.5) bt G. B. Joshi (5.5); R. Upadhayaya (6.5) bt S. Meenakshi (5.5); Yashraj Aidasani (6) drew with Ebenezer Joseph (6); Manas Ranjan Parida (5.5) lost to B. Balaji (6.5); Himanshu Sharma (5.5) lost to Somak Palit (6.5); Sayantan Dutta (6.5) bt Aksharaj Kore (5.5); Ramakrishna Kashelkar (5.5) lost to Krishan Soni (6.5).

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Next     : West Indies dominates finally