Rupesh Kant shocks Atanu Lahiri

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JAN. 7. Yet another upset was witnessed today when unfancied Rupesh Kant got the better of second-seeded Atanu Lahiri, the Commonwealth champion, in the FIDE-rated all-India open chess tournament at the Arya Vysya Abhyudaya Sangam hall in Secunderabad here today.

This was the most interesting game of the day as Lahiri opted for a Queen's gambit. Rupesh declined the gambit, playing c6 on the fourth move. Lahiri made a theoretical error by going for long castling and allowed Rupesh to exchange the knight at c3 on the 12th move. As a result Lahiri went on to lose his c4 pawn. Thereafter, Rupesh made another knight sacrifice on the 20th move to gain a superior position, which he converted into a win in 35 moves.

Third-seeded Suvrajit Saha also fell to a shock defeat against R.M. Dongre in a game arising out of a Sicillian defence. After a lot of fluctuations, as each player dominated in turns, Dongre emerged winner in 40 moves. Top-seeded P. Konguvel kept a clean slate as he easily outwitted R.S. Gupta in 30 moves of a Scotch game. Other strong players such as Tejas Bakre and Jayant Gokhale faced stiff resistance and had to be content with draws in their respective matches. While Bakre drew with S.K. Sinha, Gokhale drew with Pallavi Shah. Former National `B' champion R. Balasubramaniam was defeated by Ravi Kumar in another well- contested game.

lThe results: P. Konguvel (3) bt R.S. Gupta (2); Atanu Lahiri (2) lost to Rupesh Kant (3); K. Chakravarthy (2) lost to Sunil Kumar Rathore (3); Tejas Bakre (2.5) drew with Santosh Kumar Sinha (2.5); R.M. Dongre (3) bt Suvrajit Saha (2); Vishal Sareen (3) bt Kantilal Dave (2); Yashraj (2) lost to T.S. Ravi (3); Jayant Gokhale (2.5) drew with Pallavi Shah (2.5); Gopalakrishnan (2.5) drew with S. Soman (2.5); M.B. Muralidharan (3) bt G.C.S. Bharathi (2); B.T. Muralikrishna (3) bt M.V. Ramdas (2); Vedant Goswami (2.5) drew with Anirban Guha Roy (2.5); A. Sankar (3) bt Roktim Bandhopadhyaya (2); K.V. Shantaram (2.5) drew with G.V. Srinivas (2.5); Dilip Das (3) bt Gunasekaran (2); B. Ramanababu (3) bt A. Sashikant (2); L.V. Siva Kumar (2) lost to S.C. Subramaniam (3); J. Venkataramana (3) bt Damodar Rao (2); P. Kumaresh (2.5) drew with Manish Joshi (2.5).

R.K. Mishra (2) lost to Dinesh Kumar (3); R. Balasubramaniam (2) lost to Ravi Kumar (3); Vijay Amalraj (2.5) drew with Dipanjan Das (2.5); Arun Srivastava (2) lost to Amardip Bartakke (3); Mari Arul (3) bt Prasad Deshmukh (2); Preetham Sharma (3) bt Gopalakrishna (2); G. Srinivas (2.5) drew with T.J. Suresh Kumar (2.5).

K.N. Gopal (3) bt P. Satnyanarayana (2); R. Srinivasan (2) lost to Kalyan Kumar (3); Beenish Bhatia (3) bt R.N. Sharma (2); Zakir Hussain Mohd. (2) lost to Nisha Mohota (3). V.S. Negi (3) bt Srujana (2); Akshay Raj Kore (1.5) lost to V. Koshy (2.5); Amitpal Singh (1.5) lost to R.K. Mishra (2.5); Anand Ramesh (1.5) lost to Rahul Shetty (2.5).

Arun Prasad (2) drew with P.D.S. Girinath (2); K. Visweswaran (2.5) bt J. Malleshwar Rao (1.5); Laltu Chatterjee (25) bt Hasmat Ali Khan (1.5); Kameshwar Rao (2) drew with S.J. Kamath (2); Kartik Viswanathan (1.5) lost to Rajendra Kumar Sahu (2.5); Srinivas Rao (2.5) bt T.J.P. Satyanarayana (1.5).

N. Prasad (1.5) lost to Paranjape (2.5); S. Subba Raju (1.5) lost to Santanu Lahiri (2.5); Raghottam Reddy (1.5) lost to K. Ramu (2.5); K.V. Sudhakar (2.5) bt P. Sairam Prasad (1.5); Swapan Das (2.5) bt A. Kumar (1.5).

G. Venkateshwar Rao (1.5) lost to Saimeera Ravi (2.5); N. Vinuthna (15) lost to Milind Gawade (2.5); Rashim Pulekar (2.5) bt Subroto Sengupta (1.5); M. Rajendra (2.5) bt S. Kumar (1.5); Adway Chowdhury (2.5) bt S. Vijaysaradhi (1.5); Srutha (2) drew with R.R. Prasad Rao (2).

Malyaban Sarkar (1) lost to C.S. Gokhale (2); R. Manimaran (1) lost to Manoj Kumar Panigrahi (2); Dilip Pagay (2) bt Mihir Chandrsekhar (1); Kesavananda Krishna (1) lost to K. Muralinath (2); D.R. Srinivasan (2) bt J.N.V. Narasimha Rao (1); Mataiah Chaudhary (2) bt M. Paramasivam (1).

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