Sandipan tastes defeat

UBEDA (SPAIN), JAN. 27. Sandipan Chanda's path to his second grandmaster norm was toughened when he suffered a defeat at the hands of grandmaster Suranas Sulskis of Lithuania in the sixth round of the Ubeda international open chess tournament here on Friday.

Chanda got a mild surprise in the opening stage itself when Sulskis chose to play the king's Indian attack against the Sicilian defence instead of encountering Chanda's current favourite Taimonov system.

In an effort to play actively, Chanda opened the centre prematurely and allowed the weakening of his king side pawn structure. It was just a matter of time for the grandmaster to convert his advantage to a materialistic one in the form of two pieces for a rook. He then swiftly marched the `D' pawn to achieve his victory.

R. B. Ramesh threw away the memories of a poor start and carved out a technical victory over Bjerring of Denmark from the black side of the semi-Slav defence. After achieving equality in the opening, he won a pawn in the ensuing minor piece endgame and wrapped up the game in 40 moves.

Aarthie Ramaswamy too played a strong game to vanquish Spain's Milan Urrutia. Facing the Petroff defence, Aarthie took the upperhand in view of her possession of two bishops and soon launched a king side attack. She broke open black's castled position and delivered the checkmate on the 45th move.

Rahul Shetty and C.S. Gokhale had to be content with just draws against Reinaldo Castineira and Wohl of Australia respectively.

Shetty emerged with an advantage from the white side of the French Winawer opening and took the reins of the game with a powerful attack on black's king flank. However he missed promising winning continuations in time pressure and had to take a draw through perpetual checks. Coming across the rare `G3' system in the four knights defence, Gokhale put up a solid defence. Soon the rooks were traded and the players decided to agree for a draw in a queen and minor piece endgame after battling it out for 55 moves.

Important results: Elianov (5.5) drew with Fominyh (5.0); Sulskis (4.5) bt Sandipan Chanda (3.5); Rahul Shetty (3.0) drew with Reinaldo Castineira (3.0) ; K.Bjerring (2.0) lost to R.B.Ramesh (3.0); Wohl (2.5) drew with C.S.Gokhale (2.5) ; Paramos Dominguez (3.0) bt Visweswaran (2.0); A. Frank (2.0) lost to Sriram Jha (3.0) ; D.K.Sharma (3.0) bt Garcia Bueno (2.0) ; Aarthie Ramaswamy (2.5) bt Millan Urrutia (1.5) .

-UNI.

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