Easy opener for Satyapragyan

By Our Sports Reporter

BANGALORE, DEC. 22. The opening day of the National Under-25 chess tournament saw the top players being pitted against lesser players and results went on expected lines. Deepan Chakravarthy, the National under-15 champion, pulled out due to personal reasons further downgrading the already depleted meet.

Top seed status was accorded to Satyapragyan of Indian Airlines and he had no trouble starting off with an easy win on the top board. In fact with only Karnataka's J. Megha offering some challenge before going down fighting to S. Kherdekar all the top seven boards had expected results.

Satyapragyan was pitted against N. Modi of Gujarat on the top board and he justified his top billing. The Indian Airlines player, who has an Elo rating of 2379 which is the highest in this tournament also has been the Asia number 3 and an erstwhile Under-16 champion. Satyapragyan began with an e4 opening to which Modi responded with a Caro-Cann defence.

Gaining an early bishop pair advantage by the eighth move itself, Satyapragyan continued to hold sway throughout the game. With the opponents castling on opposite sides and Modi going in for the long castling his queen side was left slightly weaker.

On the 31st move Modi attempted a sacrifice to try and launch a mating attack but this was well countered by Satyapragyan. On the 32nd move Satyapragyan captured Modi's bishop and the latter opted to congratulate Satyapragyan, accepting defeat.

The second board saw Jammu and Kashmir's fourth ranked Obaid Ashraf pitted against Pankaj Joshi whose Elo rating is 2308. Ashraf's first move was e4 and Joshi's response was the Sicilian Defence. However it was soon evident that Ashraf was untutored and lacking in technique. Joshi castled short on the 12th move captured Ashraf's knight trapped by b5.

The game was virtually won on that move though Ashraf managed to prolong the match to the 29th move by which time he had assessed that Joshi was a rook, a bishop and a pawn ahead.

The upset in the tournament came from Rohit Karma who defeated J. Ramakrishna of Andhra Pradesh. The latter with an Elo rating of 2185 countered Rohit's 34 opening with the Sicilian Defence. Only after the players castled on opposite sides did they go into the attack mode. A mistake by Ramakrishna on the 25th move saw the scales tilt in Rohit's favour and he achieved victory on the 58th move.

Karnataka's current girls' State champion in several age categories J. Megha of Himamshu Vidya Peetha played creditably to put on a fighting display against Saurabh Kherdekar rated at 2264. Megha playing white opened with the e4 and Saurabh favoured the Sicilian Defence.

Megha continued with the Alapin Variation and kept the game on equal footing raising hopes of a draw. However after being a pawn up on the 52nd move Megha was stuck between two pawn sacrifices one on a2 and the other on d4. She erroneously opted to give up the d4 thereby allowing Saurabh to gain a king penetration. Megha surrendered on the 78th move after staving off defeat for some time.

The results:Satyapragyan bt N. Modi, Obaid Ashraf lost to Pankaj Joshi, Tej Kumar bt Preeti Bisoi, J. Megha lost to S. Kherdekar, R.R. Lakshman bt K.G. Apoorva, Vijay Keerthi bt Shivananda, M. Joshi bt R. Seeba, Rajesh lost to A.K. Pande, A. Thakur bt R.N. Krishna, Ramprakash lost to K. Rathnakar, P. Sharma bt R. Dhananjay, R.V. Karma bt J. Ramakrishna, M. Santosh drew with M. Satyajit, S. Sarangi bt P. Rajesh, Amresh Nayak bt Shushrutha, S. Yasas lost to R. Sunil, A. Dhariwal lost to T.S. Pradeep, Imitayz lost to V. Raghavndra, G. Rohit bt M. Suraj, Santosh Kumar bt R. Vishnu.

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