Swati despatches heavyweights

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 5. Frail and diminutive Swati Ghate adopted contrasting ways to remove two `heavyweights' from the way and become part of the leading pack after a day of engrossing battles in the National `B' chess championship at the Raisoni Engineering College hall here on Wednesday.

After making the most of a `timely' error by International Master Lanka Ravi in the eighth round this morning, Swati toppled third seed Sandipan Chanda and joined Sriram Jha, P. Magesh Chandran and M.R. Venkatesh at the top of the heap with 7.5 points each.

Trailing the leaders by a half-point are, top seed R.B. Ramesh, S. Satyapragyan, Vishal Sareen, C.S. Gokhale and Kiran Panditrao.

On a day when the top board saw friendly draws in both sessions, Chanda and Swati rejected each other's draw offers, in that order, before the 21-year-old girl from Pune had the last laugh. After Swati gained a good position with black pieces, it was Chanda's dubious pawn-move on the 27th move that gave the match a decisive twist. Swati gained a pawn and slowly converted the advantage in the bishop and pawn ending and forced Chanda to resign after 57 moves.

Swati now needs at least two points from the remaining four rounds to become the first woman ever to qualify for the men's National `A'.

Earlier, Venkatesh had capitalised on an error by Varugeese Koshy around the first time-control and Magesh Chandran had fought back well to turn the tables on N. Sanjay.

Jha, who took sole possession of the lead following a fine victory over N. Sudhakar Babu in the eighth round, was involved in a friendly draw with top seed Ramesh in the afternoon. Ramesh who regained his place on the top board after a gap of six rounds, was offered a draw by Jha before the start itself. But Ramesh agreed to the proposal after 10 moves in Sicilian Defence once he was convinced that it was not easy to find the desired line of progress. Even otherwise, Ramesh was not particularly desperate to win after posting five triumphs in a row.

This draw lasted four moves more than the one witnessed on the top table between Chanda and Koshy in the previous round this morning. Here, it was Chanda who made the offer.

From the lower boards, prominent contenders for a place in the first 12 finishers, were S. Vijayalakshmi and Neelotpal Das, seeded five and six, respectively. The duo won both their matches today to take their tally to six points each.

As things stand, the cut-off point for the qualifiers for the next National `A' championship, is likely to be 9.5 points. Therefore, those with 5.5 points after nine rounds can still make it provided they win the remaining four rounds.

Harika Dronavalli, the 11-year-old girl who hit the headlines by beating Vijayalakshmi and Anupama Gokhale, lost both her rounds today to remain at 4.5 points. Another youngster, Saptarshi Roy, who played the National `A' recently in New Delhi, went out of reckoning after losing his eighth round encounter this morning.

The results:

Ninth round: R.B. Ramesh (7) drew with Sriram Jha (7.5); Sandipan Chanda (6.5) lost to Swati Ghate (7.5); M.R. Venkatesh (7.5) bt Varugeese Koshy (6.5); N. Sanjay (6.5) lost to P. Magesh Chandran (7.5); G.B. Prakash (6.5) drew with Prathamesh Mokal (6.5); S. Satyapragyan (7) bt B.S. Shivananda (6); Ketan Boricha (6.5) drew with Dinesh Sharma (6.5); B.T. Murali Krishnan (6.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (6.5); Shashikant Kutwal (6) lost to Vishal Sareen (7); C.S. Gokhale (7) bt D.P. Singh (6); T.V. Karthikeyan (6) lost to Kiran Panditrao (7); S. Kidambi (6.5) bt Siddharth (6); R. Balasubramanium (6) drew with V. Saravanan (6); Preetham R. Sharma (5.5) lost to Atanu Lahiri (6.5); Lanka Ravi (6.5) bt S. Meenakshi (5.5); Arghyadip Das (5.5) lost to N. Sudhakar Babu (6.5); Santosh Kumar Sinha (6) drew with Sekhar Sahu (6); Prasenjit Dutta (6) drew with Shankar Roy (6); Gurpreet Pal Singh (6.5) bt N. Neelakanthan (5.5); R.S. Gupta (5.5) lost to Anirban Guha Roy (6.5); Ebenezer Joseph (5.5) lost to Saurabh Kherdekar (6.5); S. Vijayalakshmi (6) bt Manish Joshi (5); R.M. Dongre (5) lost to Neelotpal Das (6); T.S. Ravi (6) bt Pramod Kumar Singh (5); Suvrajit Saha (6) bt Deep Sengupta (5); Jayant Gokhale (5.5) drew with Ramakrishna Kashelkar (5.5); Rahul Shetty (6) bt Dilip Pagey (5); Vedant Goswami (6) bt Ajay Pandey (5); P. Rajesh (5) lost to K.V. Shantaram (6); Ravi Kumar (6) bt Vikas Sharma (5); G. Balaji (5.5) drew with Deepan Chakravarthi (5.5); Y. Pratibha (5) lost to Pankaj Joshi (6); Nisha Mohota (5) lost to M. Srinivasa Rao (6); Vikramaditya Kamble (6) bt Eesha Karavade (5); Manthan Chokshi (5.5) drew with Krishan Soni (5.5); J. Ramakrishna (6) bt Harkamal Singh (5); Sriram Sarja (5) lost to Nassir Wajih (6).

Eighth round: Varugeese Koshy drew with Sandipan Chanda; Sriram Jha bt B.T. Murli Krishnan; M.R. Venkatesh drew with N. Sanjay; N. Sudhakar Babu lost to R.B. Ramesh; Vishal Sareen drew with G.B. Prakash; P. Magesh Chandran bt S. Kidambi; T.V. Karthikeyan drew with S. Satyapragyan; Swati Ghate bt Lanka Ravi; V. Saravanan drew with C.S. Gokhale; Prathamesh Mokal bt T.S. Ravi; Dinesh Sharma bt Manthan Chokshi; B.S. Shivananda bt Suvrajit Saha; Shankar Roy drew with Ebenezer Joseph; K. Ratnakaran bt Jayant Gokhale; D.P. Singh bt Ravi Kumar; Pramod Kumar Singh lost to Shashikant Kutwal; N. Neelakanthan drew with R.S. Gupta; Kiran Panditrao bt Nisha Mohota; Ramakrishna Kashelkar lost to Ketan Boricha; Siddhartha bt Vikramaditya Kamble; Atanu Lahiri bt R.M. Dongre; Sekhar Sahu bt Nirav Rajasuba; Deep Sengupta drew with Rahul Shetty; Deepan Chakravarthi drew with Manish Joshi; D. Ravishankar lost to Gurpreet Pal Singh; Pankaj Joshi drew with J. Ramakrishna; Anirban Guha Roy bt Roktim Bandopadhyaya; Saurabh Kherdekar bt Surender Sharma; R. Upadhayaya lost to R. Bala Subramanium; Preetham Sharma bt G. Rohit; S. Meenakshi bt Harish Sharma; Harika Dronavalli lost to Arghyadip Das; Santosh Kumar Sinha bt Somak Palit; Rahul Sangma lost to Prasenjit Dutta; D. Laxmana Rao lost to S. Vijayalakshmi.

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