Swati set to make history

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 8. Having already done the hard work in the earlier rounds, Sriram Jha and Swati Ghate are now covering the home- stretch leading to their respective goals in a relaxed manner. Just another friendly draw in the final round of the National `B' chess championship, on Monday, will give them what they have come for. Predictably, Jha is set to claim the title following a quick-draw with LIC-teammate Dinesh Kumar Sharma on Monday. Swati, also of LIC, is looking eagerly ahead to a similar result against her city-mate from Pune, C. S. Gokhale, so that she can make history by becoming the first woman ever to qualify for the men's National `A' championship.

On Sunday, only two of the top-10 boards produced decisive as safety-first method seemed the order of the day. Considering the grim qualification race, most of these results followed the expected course.

Jha drew in 11 moves with N. Sanjay to take his tally to 9.5 points and maintain his half-point lead. Besides, Sanjay, the other five players on nine points are, Dinesh Sharma, R. B. Ramesh, P. Magesh Chandran, Gokhale and Swati.

If Swati and Ramesh drew their second board match in just three moves, Chandran and Gokhale did likewise in four. On the fourth board, N. Sudhakar Babu and second seed and GM-elect G.B. Prakash took 17 moves to reach a similar verdict.

Swati, however, spent several anxious moments before the final round pairings were finalised. She had anticipated a meeting with Prakash in the final round and that left her worried since an agreed-draw would not have suited the second seed. But once she came to know that Gokhale will be her rival, the smile returned on her face.

Earlier V. Saravanan advanced at the expense of Gurpreet Pal Singh on the 10th board. Much later, Dinesh Sharma escaped to a fortuitous, last-minute victory over Vikramaditya Kamble on the seventh board to virtually ensure a top-12 finish and with it, a place in the next National `A' championship.

So far, those assured of qualifying are, Jha, Dinesh Sharma, Ramesh, Chandran, Gokhale and Swati N. Sanjay is the only player who is not sure of making it despite going into the final round with nine points. Though Sanjay needs just a draw on Monday, his job is going to difficult.

With black pieces, Sanjay will meet WGM S. Vijayalakshmi, who faces a must-win situation in order to qualify. A draw does not suit Vijayalakshmi since her progressive score, applied to break `ties', is the lowest among those with 8.5 points. As things stand, 13 players have 8.5 points. Apart from Prakash and Vijayalakshmi, the other equally-desperate aspirants are, Saravanan, S. Kidambi, S. Satyapragyan, T. S. Ravi, Lanka Ravi, N. Sudhakar Babu, Varughese Koshy, Vishal Sareen, Suvrajit Saha, Satchidanand Soman and Kiran Panditrao.

In other words, six boards involving these players will throw up the qualifiers. Should all these matches prove decisive, then none with an eventual score of nine points has any chance of making the list of qualifiers.

Leading pairings of the final round : Dinesh Sharma- Jha; Ramesh- Chandran; Gokhale-Swati; Vijayalakshmi-Sanjay; Prakash-Koshy; Saha-Saravanan; Kidambi-Babu; Soman-Satyapragyan; T.S. Ravi- Panditrao; Lanka Ravi-Sareen.

lThe results :

12th round : Sriram Jha (9.5) drew with N. Sanjay (9); Swati Ghate (9) drew with R. B. Ramesh (9); P. Magesh Chandran (9) drew with C. S. Gokhale (9); N. Sudhakar Babu (8.5) drew with G. B. Prakash (8.5); Vishal Sareen (8.5) drew with S. Kidambi (8.5); S. Satyapragyan (8.5) drew with Suvrajit Saha (8.5); Dinesh Sharma (9) bt Vikramaditya Kamble (8); Kiran Panditrao (8.5) drew with Lanka Ravi (8.5); Vedant Goswami (8) drew with Sandipan Chanda (8); V. Saravanan (8.5) bt Gurpreet Pal Singh (7.5); M. R. Venkatesh (7.5) lost to S. Vijayalakshmi (8.5); Atanu Lahiri (8) drew with Roktim Bandopadhyaya (8); Amardeep Bartakke (7.5) lost to T. S. Ravi (8.5); Varughese Koshy (8.5) bt Rohan Shandilya (7.5); Preetham Sharma (7.5) lost to Satchidanand Soman (8.5); Prathamesh Mokal (8) drew with Shankar Roy (8); Neelotpal Das (8) bt K. Ratnakaran (7); Manish Joshi (7) lost to B. T. Murali Krishnan (8); Manoj Mishra (7) lost to Rahul Shetty (8); M. K. Panigrahi (7.5) drew with Ravi Kumar (7.5); D. P. Singh (7) lost to Deepan Chakravarthi (8); Pankaj Joshi (7.5) drew with Nirav Rajasuba (7.5); Pramod Kumar Singh (8) bt S. K. Rathod (7); Anirban Guha Roy (8) bt R. Bala Subramanium (7); B. S. Shivananda (7.5) drew with Pradip Ghosh (7.5); M. Srinivasa Rao (8) bt Prasenjit Dutta (7); Vikrant Chole (7.5) drew with Saptarshi Roy (7); Sekhar Sahu (7) drew with S. Ram Krishan (7); K. V. Shantaram (7.5) bt Vikas Sharma (6.5); Ajay Pandey (6.5) lost to Shashikant Kutwal (7.5); Siddharth (7.5) bt Nisha Mohota (6.5); Saurabh Kherdekar (7) drew with Tania Sachdev (7); Anupama Gokhale (6.5) lost to R. Upadhyaya (7.5).

K. Nikhilesh Kumar (6.5) lost to Arghayadip Das (7.5); Ketan Boricha (7) drew with G. Balaji (); Manthan Chokshi (7.5) bt G. C. Mohapatra (6.5); Somak Palit (7.5) bt N. Neelakanthan (6.5); Deep Sengupta (6.5) lost to Krishan Soni (7.5); Chaitanya Vaidya (6.5) lost to Sayantan Dutta (7.5); Nassir Wajih (7) bt N. Vinuthna (6.5); Anup Deshmukh (7) bt Y. Kalyan Kumar (6); Dilip Das (7) bt Jayant Gokhale (6); Sharad Tilak (6.5) drew with Poobesh Anand (6.5); T. V. Karthikeyan (7) bt Yashraj Aidasani (6); Pranjal Das (6.5) drew with C. Natrajan (6.5); Ashwani Tiwari (6.5) drew with Praveen Saxena (6.5); V. Hariharan (7) bt G. Rohit (6); Arjun Tiwari (6.5) drew with Santosh Kumar Sinha (6.5); Nabeela Farheen (6) lost to J. Ramakrishna (7); Ebenezer Joseph (6.5) drew with Abhijit Gupta (6.5).

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