Ramesh steamrollers his way to the top

By Rakesh Rao

JALANDHAR, JUNE 13. At his rampaging best, top seed R. B. Ramesh steamrolled his way to the top, followed by three lesser known players, on the penultimate day of the LML-National rapid chess championship at the MGN Public School here on Tuesday.

Ramesh notched victories over Varughese Koshy, Sushant Banerjee and Yogesh Gore to notch 7.5 points and stayed a point clear of the field. Though some of the more fancied names struggled, eighth seed Dinesh Kumar Sharma was joined in the second place by Pune's Sashikant Kutwal and Muzaffarpur's Santosh Kumar Sinha, ranked 25th and 31st in the 81-player field.

It was also a day when the law over averages caught up rather ruthlessly with overnight leader and another International Master N. Sudhakar Babu. The soft-spoken Babu, who had won the first five rounds, crashed to three successive losses on this day to tumble out of reckoning.

Like Babu, P. Konguvel also saw his streak of five straight comeback victories rudely snapped by fellow-Chennai player, A. Shankar in the eighth round.

Following comfortable victories in the preceding rounds, Ramesh sacrificed a pawn in Sicilian Defence against Gore but did not get any apparent advantage. Though Ramesh won back the pawn, he once again offered a pawn for some active play. Gore, with time ticking away, mishandled a position from where he could have earned him a draw and lost.

On the second board, Kutwal surprised the previously unbeaten Saha from an inferior position. Time factor went against Saha and he allowed Kutwal to race away to his third victory of the day. Dinesh Kumar, another docile contender, looked in trouble against Tamil Nadu youngster R. R. Laxman in Slav Defence. In the middle game, due to Dinesh's oversight, Laxman gained a bishop and knight for a rook. Undeterred, Dinesh bounced right back and threatened to win back a bishop by force on the seventh rank. That made Laxman give up.

Santosh Sinha, with a victory over second seeded Chandrashekhar Gokhale in the seventh round, went on to complete Babu's misery in the day's final round. Sinha, who had stunned holder Sriram Jha on Monday, has so far played some aggressively and laid low a few big yet unsuspecting rivals.

But with three rounds to go on the final day, surely some more surprises are in store. It will also be interesting to note the extent to which like Gokhale, Konguvel, Jha, Vishal Sareen and Koshy, seeded behind Ramesh in that order, are allowed to salvage their pride.

The results : (Eighth round) : R. B. Ramesh (PSCB) 7.5 bt Yogesh Gore (MP) 5.5; Suvarjit Saha (Rlys) 6 lost to Sashikant Kutwal (Mah) 6.5; R. R. Laxman (TN) 5.5 lost to Dinesh Kumar Sharma (LIC) 6.5; N. Sudhakar Babu (IB) 5 lost to Santosh Kumar Sinha (NCA) 6.5; P. Konguvel (PSCB) 5 lost to A. Shankar (TN) 6; Sushant S. Banerjee (Mah) 5.5 drew with Varughese Koshy (PSCB) 5.5; S. Satyapragyan (IA) 5 lost to Kiran Panditrao (Mah) 6; Chandrashekhar Gokhale (IA) 5.5 bt Vinod Bhagwat (CR) 5; Vishal Sareen (LIC) 5.5 bt Laltu Chatterjee (Rlys) 4.5; Manoj Mishra (MP) 5.5 bt Valay Parikh (Guj) 4.5; Y. P. Srivastava (Bih) 4 lost to Sriram Jha (LIC) 5; Shankar Roy (Rlys) 5 bt Ebenezer Joseph (ECA) 4; B. T. Muralikrishna (Rlys) 5 bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha (Bih) 4; Rahul Shetty (IA) 4 lost to K. Gunashekhar (TN) 5; M. Y. Raju (AP) 4 lost to G. B. Joshi 5; Ashwani Tiwari (Pun) 4.5 drew with Rashmin Pulekar (Mah) 4.5; Vedant Goswami (Raj) 5 bt D. Devendra Kumar (TN) 4; S. Mari Arul (TN) 4 lost to Vinod Sharma (Pun) 5;

Manish Joshi (MP) 4.5 drew with K. K. Nath (Ori) 4.5; Rajesh Kumar (Bih) 4.5 bt Gurpreet Pal Singh (Rlys) 3.5.

Seventh round : Sushant Banerjee (2) lost to Ramesh 6; Saha (6) drew with Laxman (5.5); Dinesh Sharma (5.5) bt Babu (5); Sinha (5.5) bt Gokhale (4.5); Gore (5.5) bt Har Om Sharma (3.5); Kutwal (5.5) bt Sunil Rangarajan (3.5); Joseph (4) lost to Konguvel (5); Parikh (4.5) drew with Sareen (4.5); Koshy (5) bt Y. P. Srivastava (4); Panditrao (5) bt Shankar Roy (4); Sudhir Kumar Sinha (4) lost to Satyapragyan (5); Bhagwat (5) bt Muralikrishna (4); Shankar (5) bt Raju (4); Gurpreet (3.5) lost to Manoj Mishra (4.5); Laltu Chatterjee (4.5) bt Vikas Sharma (3.5).

Sixth round : Babu (5) lost to Saha (5.5); Ramesh (5.5) bt Koshy (4); Muralikrishna (4) lost to Banerjee (5); Santosh Singh (4.5) drew with Gore (4.5); Panditrao (4) lost to Laxman (5); Gokhale (4.5) bt Laltu Chatterjee (3.5); Sareen (4) drew with Shankar (4); Mari Arul (3.5) lost to Dinesh Kumar Sharma (4.5); Hari Om Sharma (3.5) lost to Kutwal (4.5); Konguvel (4) bt Vikash Sharma (3.5); Parikh (4) bt Jha (3); Shankar Roy (4) bt Himanshu Sharma (3); Satyapragyan (4) bt Krishan Soni (Har); Y. P. Srivastava (4) bt P. D. S. Girinath (3); Sudhir Kumar Sinha (4) bt Kanwarjit Singh (3).

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