Magesh pulls off crucial win

HYDERABAD, FEB. 5. P. Magesh Chandran of Tamil Nadu scored a crucial win over top seed C.J. Aravind to emerge a clear leader with seven points, at the end of the eighth round in the junior National (under-19) chess championship, conducted by Umer Koya Chess Academy at Prabhat Towers, here today.

In a game which saw both the players make several errors, the winner was predictably the one who made lesser errors. In the Reti opening King's Indian attack, Aravind (playing black) made too many mistakes very early. Ironically, it was Magesh who made a costly lapse on the 20th move - Ne5 - which saw him lose his knight. But, much to his delight, Aravind paid back the compliment by a strange manouevre making him a piece down. Though Magesh offered a draw, Aravind refused and continued playing before resigning after 50 moves.

In an interesting game on the top board, Ratnakaran outwitted M.R. Venkatesh in 80 moves under time pressure. The turning point of the contest was the crucial 51st move - Rg6 - by Ratnakaran (playing black) after which Venkatesh lost the queen and resigned later.

The results:

Eighth round: M.R. Venkatesh (6.5) lost to K. Ratnakaran (6.5); P. Magesh Chandran (7) bt C.J. Aravind (5.5); Poobesh Anand (6) bt Deepan Chakravarthy (5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdary (6) bt K. Nikhlesh Kumar (5); R.S. Prasanna (5.5) drew with Beenish Bhatia (5.5); G. Rohit (6) bt Akash Thakur (4.5); C. Praveen Kumar (5) drew with R.R. Laxman (5); Vikramaditya Kambli (5.5) bt Ishmeet Singh (4.5); Pranjal Das (4.5) lost to Ramu S. Krishnan (5.5); E.P. Nirmal (5.5) bt Sunil Rangarajan (4.5): K. Vijay Keerthi (4.5) lost to S. Rishipal Singh (5); Prathamesh Mokal (4.5) drew with J.M. Utarid (4.5): Abhijit Chotia (4) lost to R. Preetam Sharma (5): Vijay Kumar (4) lost to Vikas Sharma (5); Bharat Gupta (5) bt Pratik R. Srihas (4); Hari Balu (4) lost to Shatrughan Jha (5); Girwarlal (4.5) drew with Punit Jaisal (4.5); Arjun Tiwari (4.5) bt B. Shivashankar (3.5); Wilson Cruz (4) drew with Aditya Soni (4); Dasari Sai Srinivas (4.5) bt F.A. Ashfaq (3.5); P. Purushothaman (4.5) bt Rajib Dhar (3.5); Saket Sharma (3) lost to Gurpreet Singh (4.5); Dasari Minu (4) bt K. Ramesh (3); Sandeep Patnaik (3) lost to Mekhala Abhinav (4); S.S. Barve (3) lost to N. Vinuthna (4); Ravi Ranjan (3.5) drew with Shiva Chaitanya (3.5); Sumit Grover (3) lost to Abhishek Sharma (4); T.S.Pradeep (3) lost to Amit Sharma (2); Tariq Umer Khan (3.5) drew with Karan Bhatty (3.5); Divjot Singh (3.5) drew with Nikhil Sahay (3.5); Anil Agarwal (3) drew with P.Phukal (3); Pradeep Arora (3) drew with Ashutosh Singh (3); Amit Kumar Gupta (2.5) lost to Pratik Tripathi (3); K.Rajnikanth Reddy (2) lost to Gaurav Nangia (3); A. Tejdeep (3) bt M.C. Abhiraj (2); B. Mithun Das (2) lost to P. Hansu (3); V. Veeravikram (2) lost to Shival Jethu (3); M.V.D. Prashanth (2.3) bt S. Praneet (0); Harikrishna (1) lost to R.Raviteja (2).

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