Ramesh holds Akopian

By Manuel Aaron

CALCUTTA, FEB.7 FIDE World chess championship runner-up Vladimir Akopian of Armenia was held to a draw by International Master R.B.Ramesh. And Sandipan Chanda of Goodricke National Chess Academy became the first Indian to beat a Grandmaster in the 11th edition of the Goodricke International Open. The second round concluded tonight at the Gorky Sadan here.

In the modified accelerated Swiss pairing the top half of the players do not meet the lower half till the end of the third round. Consequently there are two sets of leaders. The leaders in the top half are Gregory Kaidanov (USA) and Jozsef Horvath (Hun) while the leaders from the lower half are Sriram Jha, Jayant Gokhale, Arun Vaidya, Gurpreetpal Singh and Aarthie Ramaswamy. All these players are on two points. Nine more rounds remain.

Ramesh had come well prepared for his game against Akopian. He had seen in his computer how Akopian had played the Pirc defence against Michael Adams in the Las Vegas FIDE World championship last year. Akopian varied from that game and Ramesh obtained an advantage. Akopian neutralised the game when they reached a queen and minor piece ending. He even won a pawn when the bishop and knight were exchanged off. But in the resultant queen ending, Akopian's four pawns on the king-side could not do any damage to white's three pawns on the same side. The players agreed to a draw after five hours of play.

National Champion Sasikiran had an exciting game against 22-year old Ukraine Grandmaster Alexandre Goloshchapov. In the black side of a fashionable Scotch Opening he castled long. It was full of tactics at all stages. Sasikiran had a bishop on a6 and a knight on b4 which did not seem to be relevant to the midboard activities. On the 18th move he doubled his rooks aggressively and offered a draw which the grandmaster accepted. With the quiet move of a pawn (a2-a3), it appeared as though Goloshchapov could have attacked the black knight which had no escape square. Sasikiran thought that he would have excellent chances giving up his knight and bishop for a rook and pawn. Obviously, Goloshchapov shared his views for he agreed to a draw. All the spectators thought that the Ukrainian missed a good opportunity to score the full point and Sasikiran was lucky. However, the chess software Fritz5 evaluated the position as equal. Later Sasikiran said that at that stage both of them had only 20 minutes to make 22 moves and the position, though extremely complicated, was equal.

Sixteen-year old Sandipan Chanda became the first Indian to beat a Grandmaster in this event. He accounted for Grandmaster Toni Najdoski of Macedonia. Macedonia was once a part of Yugoslavia.

Najdoski is in India for the first time and it is possible that he expected an easy victory against the unknown Indian youngster. Sandipan helped that illusion along by playing the opening very cleverly. The opening went: 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 d3 d5 4 Qe2 Ne7 c3. On the 7th move Sandipan played Na3 as well in what was a Kings Indian attack by transposition. In the first seven moves Najdoski had moved his king knight twice and brought it to the queen-side and moved his queen upto d5 and then back to d8. This loss of time quickly snowballed into a big advantage for white. When black tried to complete his development the white rooks penetrated to his second rank and the defenceless black king came under a big attack. Najdoski overstepped the time limit on the 27th move and lost.

Former World Championship Challenger Viktor Korchnoi had a fine positional victory over Indian grandmaster Praveen Thipsay in 25 moves. With the white pieces Korchnoi played the Samisch attack against the King's Indian, exchanged off queens and quickly obtained a terrific bind over the black position. With absolutely no counter play and one of his central pawns on the way out, Thipsay resigned.

Veteran IM Arun Vaidya playing after a long lay-off has beaten two International Masters in a row - Koshy in the first round and today, Neeraj Mishra in the second.

Koneru Humpy and Aarthie Ramaswamy had satisfying victories over IM Mithrakanth and IM-elect Rahul Shetty.

Important results:(Second round ): Ibragimov (Rus) 1.5 drew with Yurtayev (Kirgiz) 1.5;

Blatny (Cze) 1 lost to Kaidanov (USA) 2; Goloshchapov (Ukr) 1.5 drew with Sasikiran 1.5; Kunte 1.5 Iordachescu drew (Moldova) 1.5; J.Horvath (Hun) 2 bt Vakhidov (Uzb) 1; G.B.Joshi 1 lost to Sriram Jha 2; P.Harikrishna 1 lost to Jayant Gokhale 2; Shankar Roy 1 lost to Suvrajit Saha 2; Girinath 1.5 drew with Satyapragyan 1.5; Arun Vaidya 2 bt Neeraj Mishra 1; Gurpreetpal Singh 2 bt Neelakantan 1; Aarthie Ramaswamy 2 bt Rahul Shetty 1; Konguvel 1.5 bt L.Imocha 1; Ramesh 1 drew with Akopian (Arm) 1;

Korchnoi (Swi) 1.5 bt P.M.Thipsay 0.5; Qin Kanying (Chn) 0.5 lost to Peng (Chn) 1.5; Evgeny Vladimirov (Kaz) 1 drew with Ziaur Rahman (Ban) 1; Webster (Eng) 1 drew with Sorokin (Arg) 1; Murugan 1 drew with Dao Thien Hai (Vie) 1; Lalic (Eng) 1.5 bt S.Kidambi 0.5; Sandipan Chanda 1.5 bt Najdoski (Maced) 0.5; D.K.Sharma 0.5 lost to Tejas Bakre 1.5; Mithrakanth 0.5 lost to Humpy 1.5; Visweswaran 1.5 bt Laltu Chatterjee 0.5; S.S.Ganguly 1.5 bt Vijayalakshmi 0.5; Azer Mirzoev (Aze) 0 lost to Reefatbin Sattar (Ban) 1; G.B.Prakash 1 bt Payen (Fra) 0; C.S.Gokhale 0.5 drew with D.V.Prasad 0.5; Roeder (Ger) 0.5 drew with Collas (Fra) 0.5; T.S.Ravi 0.5 drew with V.Saravanan 0.5; Vishal Sareen 0 lost K.V.Shantharam 0 lost to V.Koshy 1; R.M.Dongre 0.5 drew with Sudhakar Babu 0.5.

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