Jha wins NIIT Open rating championship

By Our Sports Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 27. Double International Master-norm holder Sriram Jha held his nerves well and tactically drew his final round game against Prathmesh Mokal to claim the title at the NIIT All-India Open Rating Chess championship here on Friday.

Second seeded Jha of LIC tallied nine points from the 11-round Swiss League tournament to win the title on the progressive scoring as three players finished with same number of points. Jha's maiden win at an Open event fetched him Rs.50,000 as the first prize.

Pune youngster Prathmesh (9) had a progressive score of 58, one less than Jha, and settled for Rs. 25,000 second prize. Railway's sixth seeded Suvrajit Saha (9) played a fantastic final round game to claim full point against Saurabh Kherdekar (8.5) and in turn helped Jha relieve the tremendous pressure put on him.

Former world under-12 bronze medallist, Tania Sachdev, emerged as the best woman player. It was a remarkable finish for Tania in an Open tournament with so many highly-rated players playing. Tania defeated S. C. D. Devgun in the 11th round to finish with eight points.

Jha, who was locked in a three-way tie for the top spot with Prathmesh and Kherdekar going into the final round, needed to keep his eyes on two boards. While Jha kept focus on his game, the Delhi player also had to keep one eye on the second board, where Kherdekar was up against Saha. A full point for Kherdekar would have meant Jha had to go for a win.

Opening with a Queen Pawn, Jha tried to force Prathmesh into the backfoot but the youngster shot back with the Benoni defence and got into advantageous position. Prathmesh has a passed pawn on the A side putting him into technically better position. But, he blundered a pawn move in the middlegame allowing Jha to go a pawn up.

By then Saha had taken a clear lead over Kherdekar and as soon as the latter resigned, Jha opted for the draw.

``I wanted to win this tournament very badly. I had never won an Open Rating tournament. So, when I saw Kherdekar losing, I went for the draw,'' Jha, who completed the tournament without a single loss, said.

``I thank Saha for playing an excellent game. He sacrificed an exchange and still played very solid,'' Jha summed up.

In the Saha-Kherdekar match in a Kings Indian Opening, the eventual winner played a novelty on the 22nd move and then exploited knight to force an exchange on the 25th. Saha then went for the mating attack and Kherdekar resigned after 34th move.

Important results (11th round, prefix denotes seeding): 2-Sriram Jha (9) drew Prathmesh Mokal (9); 6-Suvrajit Saha (9) bt Saurabh Kherdekar (8.5); Roktim Bandopadhayay (8.5) drew 1-S. Satyapragyan (8.5); 9-Saptarshi R. Chowdhury (8.5) drew Suman Kumar Singh (8.5).

Sukhpal Singh Khalsi (8) lost to 3-Nassir Wajih (8.5); 4-Verghese Koshy (8) drew Pramod Kumar Singh (8); V. S. Negi (8) drew 5- Vishal Sareen (8); Pradeep Pathak (8) drew 7-P. D. S. Girinath (8); 8-Neeraj Kumar Mishra (8.5) bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha (7.5); 10- Vedant Goswami (7.5) lost to Chander Pal (8.5); G. P. Singh (8.5) bt D. S. Negi (7.5).

Harish Sharma (7.5) lost to G. B. Joshi (8.5); Diwakar Prasad Singh (8.5) bt Updesh Sharma (7.5); K. C. Joshi (7) lost to Santosh Kumar Sinha (8); Khakhai Zou (7) lost to K. B. L. Srivastava (8); Tania Sachdev (8) bt S. C. D. Devgun (7); M. Abhinav (7.5) drew Saket Sharma (7.5); Shankar (8) bt Biswajit Roy Chowdhury (7).

Avinash Sethi (8) bt Shyam Sunder Sharma (7); Devender Bhatia (8) bt Praveen Kumar Karnwal (7); Manoj Mishra (6.5) lost to Samunder Kumar Girsa (7.5); Prakash B. V. (7.5) bt Parimarjan Negi (6.5); Ravi Khanna (7.5) bt Swaraj Palit (6.5); Abhijit Gupta (7.5) bt Yuzvendra S. Chahal (6.5); Rajesh Kumar (7.5) bt D. Lalit Kumar (6.5); Milind Gawade (6.5) lost to D. Meenu (7.5).

Ishmeet Singh (7.5) btL. Dhanunjaya Rao (6.5); Rajesh Kumar Nath (6.5) lost to Mahesh Kumar Jain (7.5); S. K. Prasad (7) drew Samarth Modwal (7); Rajeev V. M. (6.5) w/o Arvinder Preet Singh (6.5); S. K. Chetry (7.5) bt Baljeet Singh (6.5); Subramanya Sharma (7.5) w/o D. K. Chopra (6.5); R. K. Gupta (6.5) lost to Surender Kumar (7).

Karan Bhatti (7) bt Akshay Kumar Jain (6); Keshav Sharma (6.5) drew Ashok Alexander (6.5); Krishnamurthy (6) lost to V. Rajit (7); Rama Rao (6) lost to Pranjal Phukan (7); S. K. Nanda (7) bt Prem Chug (6); Amarnath I. (6) lost to Kunal Gupta (7); Sharma C. L. (6) lost to Ajit Kumar Verma (7); Manu Madan (7) bt A. B. Chhoi (6).

A. V. S. Vijaya Kumar (7) bt Lallan Kumar Chaudhary (6); Mukesh Mandloi (7) bt Amit Kumar Gupta (6); Amit Mehrotra (6) w/o R. Srinivasan (6); Anirban Basu (7) bt Pramod Yadav (6); Raj Kumar (6) lost to Anirudh Aggarwal (7); Ravi Ranjan (7) bt Anuj Kumar (6); Ashok Saini (6) lost to S. R. Hussain (7); Debojyoti Banerjee (7); bt Sanjeev Ghosh (6).

Deepak Rai (7) bt Shakeel Ahmed (6); T. R. Chibber (6) lost to Devender Suri (7); P. S. Satish Kumar (6) lost to Jiby M. (7); Kapil Gupta (7) bt Vinod Khanna (6); Aman Chahal (6) drew Virat Markendeya (6.5); Karthik (5.5) lost to Ashu Rawat (6.5); Neeraj Mor (6.5) bt B. K. Sinha (5.5); Pawan Kumar (5.5) lost to C. S. Sharma (6.5). Hemant Kumar (6.5) bt Nirmalya Banerjee (5.5).

Final standings (prizemoney positions): 1. Sriram Jha, 2. Prathmesh Mokal, 3. Suvrajit Saha, 4. S. Satyapragyan, 5. Saptarshi R. Chowdhury, 6. Saurabh Kherdekar, 7. Diwakar Prasad Singh, 8. Neeraj Kumar Mishra, 9. Suman Kumar Singh, 10. Roktim Bandopadhayay, 11. G. P. Singh, 12. Nassir Wajih, 13. Chander Pal, 14. G. B. Joshi, 15. Santosh Kumar Sinha.

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