Sanjay outwits Saravanan, joins leaders

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 4. Pleasant and polite in his ways, N. Sanjay showed that if the situation demanded, he could be ruthless too. The 25- year-old demonstrated the point against an unsuspecting V. Saravanan while punishing the fourth seed for pressing his luck too hard in their seventh round encounter of the National `B' chess championship here today.

Seeded 17, the Mysore-based Sanjay handed out a 42- move defeat to Saravanan in their game which followed the English Opening. A draw appeared a distinct possibility but Saravanan tried harder than necessary to win and was duly punished by his rival from Central Revenue.

Sanjay, who has won six straight matches after losing the opening round, now joins overnight leaders Sandeepan Chanda, M. R. Venkatesh and B. T. Murali Krishnan besides, Sriram Jha and Varugeese Koshy, at six points.

Chanda and Venkatesh drew their top-board match after a long battle of wits on the queenside. Venkatesh did emerge with a pawn-advantage around the first time-control but the edge was not decisive enough. Similarly, second seed G. B. Prakash and Murali Krishnan settled for a draw in their protracted positional warfare.

Playing black, 10th seeded Jha expectedly outwitted Suvrajit Saha in their Slav game lasting 33 moves. The match followed the line played by Jha in his recent drawn-encounter against K. Sasikiran in the National `A' in New Delhi. In this variation, white sacrifices a pawn for initiative. But Jha, following a little- known variation shown by Filipino J. Sanchez, managed to foil Saha's aggressive designs and notched up a smooth victory.

Dongre's streak ends

Koshy, the 16th seed, snapped the five- match winning sequence of R. M. Dongre, ranked 82nd in the fray. Dongre, known for his fancy for `fireworks' on the board, lost his way in the middle- game. Koshy, with a two-pawn cushion in the endgame involving a rook each besides pawns, had no trouble in providing the finishing touches.

N. Sudhakar Babu and Swati Ghate remained in the second spot following their listless draw. Before G. B. Prakash joined the duo at 5.5 points, top seed R. B. Ramesh, S. Kidambi, S. Satyapragyan, Lanka Ravi, Vishal Sareen, P. Magesh Chandran, C. S. Gokhale and T. V. Karthikeyan registered expected victories to stay just half-a-point behind the leaders.

Of the lot, Ramesh had to overcome some self-created problems before getting the better of Deepan Chakravarthi while Gokhale halted the dream run of Harika Dronavalli.

Harika, playing with black pieces, held on till 67 moves of Grunfeld Defence before accepting the inevitable. Later, Gokhale said he was impressed by the ability of the 11-year-old to find the best possible combination even when the situation was not looking very bright for her.

On the lower boards, S. Vijayalakshmi and Atanu Lahiri, seeded five and 10, stayed firmly on the recovery-path with contrasting victories. However, sixth seed Neelotpal Das had no reason to be pleased after being held by Sudhir Kumar Sinha, ranked 95th in the field.

lThe results:

Seventh round: Sandeepan Chanda (6) drew with M. R. Venkatesh (6); G. B. Prakash (5.5) drew with B. T. Murali Krishnan (6); N. Sanjay (6) bt V. Saravanan (5); Suvrajit Saha (5) lost to Sriram Jha (6); N. Sudhakar Babu (5.5) drew with Swati Ghate (5.5); R. M. Dongre (5) lost to Varugeese Koshy (6); R. B. Ramesh (5.5) bt Deepan Chakraborty (4.5); S. Kidambi (5.5) bt Pankaj Joshi (4.5); S. Satyapragyan (5.5) bt Saurabh Kherdekar (4.5); R. S. Gupta (5) drew with Dinesh Kumar Sharma (5).

Lanka Ravi (5.5) bt Preetham Sharma (4.5); Vishal Sareen (5.5) bt R. Upadhyaya (4.5); Shashikant Kutwal (5) drew with Shankar Roy (5); Jayant Gokhale (5) drew with Vikramaditya Kamble (5); Manish Joshi (4.5) lost to P. Magesh Chandran (5.5); C. S. Gokhale (5.5) bt Harika Dronavalli (4.5); G. Rohit (4.5) lost to T. V. Karthikeyan (5.5); T. S. Ravi (5) bt Manoj Mishra (4); Nassir Wajih (4) lost to K. Ratnakaran (5); Anup Deshmukh (4) lost to N. Neelakanthan (4).

J. Ramakrishna (4.5) drew with Sekhar Sahu (4.5); Satchidanand Soman (4) lost to Pramod Kumar Singh (5); Rahul Shetty (4.5) drew with D. Ravishankar (4.5); Saptarishi Roy (4) lost to Kiran Panditrao (5); Vedant Goswami (4) lost to Ramakrishna Kashelkar (5); D. P. Singh (5) bt K. V. Shantaram (4); Ravi Kumar (5) bt K. Gopalkrishnan (4); Roktim Bandopadhyaya (4.5) drew with Deep Sengupta (4.5); S. K. Rathod (4) lost to Siddhartha (5); Ebenezer Joseph (5) bt G. B. Joshi (4).

Nisha Mohota (5) bt Dilip Pagey (4); Ketan Boricha (5) bt Ajay Pandey (4); Pradip Ghosh (4) lost to Prathamesh Mokal (5); Manthan Chokshi (5) bt Harkamal Singh (4); N. Vinuthna (4) lost to B. S. Shivananda (5); Sudhir Kumar Sinha (4) drew with Neelotpal Das (4); Y. Kalyan Kumar (3.5) lost to Atanu Lahiri (4.5); Nasir Ali (4) drew with Sharad Tilak (4); Gurpreet Pal Singh (4.5) bt K. Lakshminarayanan (3.5); C. Natrajan (3.5) lost to Anirban Guha Roy (4.5).

Vikas Sharma (4) drew with Ashwani Tiwari (4); R. Bala Subramanium (4.5) bt Saimeera Ravi (3.5); Anupama Gokhale (3.5) lost to Harish Sharma (4.5); Adway Choudhari (3.5) lost to S. Meenakshi (4.5); Abhijit Gupta (4) with V. Hariharan (4); Argydip Das (4.5) bt Abhinandan Vohra (3.5); Mukesh Mandloi (3.5) lost to Santosh Kumar Sinha (4.5); Prasenjit Dutta (4.5) bt G. Srikanth (3.5); Nirav Rajasuba (4.5) bt Yashraj Aidasani (3.5); Rajesh Agrawal (4) drew with M. K. Panigrahi (4).

Dharmeswar Pegu (3.5) lost to Somak Palit (4.5); Himanshu Sharma (4) drew with Eesha Karwade (4); Surender Sharma (4.5) bt M. R. Sangeetha (3.5); B. V. Prakash (3.5) lost to Rahul Sangma (3.5); Gurpreet Singh Maras (4) drew with D. Laxmana Rao (4); Manas Ranjan Parida (4) bt Ashok Gajwani (3.5); S. Vijayalakshmi (4) bt Gourahari Mohapatra (3); Amardeep Bartakke (4) bt Satya Ranjan Patanaik (3); Shahid Azmat (3) lost to Virender Singh Negi (4); Sayatan Dutta (3) bt J. E. Kavitha (4).

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