Sport - Chess

Sasikiran assured of title
By Rakesh Rao

BIKANER, FEB. 27. Twelve-year-old Harika Dronavalli made sure of her maiden Woman International Master norm even as K. Sasikiran ensured the Asian Open chess title at the Laxmi Niwas Palace here on Wednesday.

Sasikiran easily drew with Tejas Bakre on the top board to maintain his overnight one-point lead. On Thursday, in the 11th and final round, he requires just another draw to take the winner's cheque of Rs. one lakh. Even if Sasikiran loses and ties for the first place, he will still take the title on the basis of his superior progressive score. However, in such a scenario, Sasikiran will have to share the prize-money.

For the record, Sasikiran is ahead with eight points, followed by Uzbek GM Marat Dzhumaev, P. Hari Krishna, R.B. Ramesh, P. Magesh Chandran and Dibyendu Barua at seven points each. A further half-point behind are Bakre, Abhijit Kunte, 12- year-old Abhijit Gupta and Rahul Shetty.

Harika took her first step towards becoming a WIM by making a 10-game norm. She drew with Sri Lanka's D. Muthu Priyadarshana in the day's longest battle and completed all technical requirements. With a tally of five points and a match in hand, Harika is also well poised to annex the Asian girls (under-18) title on Thursday.

Though Harika made it, the chances of Ramesh making his GM-norm diminished a little following a 16-move draw with P. Magesh Chandran. In fact, a victory would have helped Ramesh's cause without affecting Magesh's hopes of attaining an International Master norm. Still, efforts are on to find a way to award Ramesh a nine-game GM-norm. On the other hand, Magesh is awaiting a match against Indonesian top seed Utut Adianto to reach his goal.

Though some off-the-board calculations by the norm- aspirants continued, Barua got it all right when it came to on- board tactics and downed Adianto in 50 moves. In what was the only decisive result on the top five boards, Barua gained plenty from Adianto's early pawn-sacrifice in the Panov-Botwinnik System in Carokann.

Adianto could have taken back the pawn and agreed for a draw. But he continued with his aggressive posture and paid the price. Once Barua managed to exchange the queens and nullify Adianto's advantage, the Indonesian had no choice but to defend the position with a pawn less. The growing desperation saw Adianto give up a rook for a minor piece but by this time, Barua had already sighted victory.

Before Hari and Dzhumaev drew on the second board, Abhijit Gupta came up with a creditable draw against Uzbek IM Tahir Vakhidov to reach 6.5 points. In fact, it was Abhijit who claimed a draw at the end of 40 moves by pointing out that an identical position was reached three times in the match. After intervention by the arbiters, it was clear that position on the board following the 32nd move had, indeed, reoccurred after the 38th and 40th moves.

Some of the decisive matches saw Rahul Shetty devastate D.V. Prasad in 25 moves, S. Poobesh Anand get the better of Aarthie Ramaswamy, K. Ratnakaran overpower Deepsen Gupta and Iranian GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami stop WIM Nisha Mohota.

The results (Indians unless stated): 10th round: Tejas Bakre (6.5) drew with K. Sasikiran (8); Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) (7) drew with P. Hari Krishna (7); R.B. Ramesh (7) drew with P. Magesh Chandran (7); Dibyendu Barua (7) bt Utut Adianto (Indo) (6); Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) (6) drew with Abhijit Gupta (6.5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (5.5) lost to Abhijit Kunte (6.5); Rahul Shetty (6.5) bt D.V. Prasad (5); Roktim Bandopadhyay (5.5) drew with Sriram Jha (5.5); S. Poobesh Anand (6) bt Aarthie Ramaswamy (5); Deepsen Gupta (5) lost to K. Ratnakaran (6); Somak Palit (5.5) drew with Prathmesh Mokal (5); Nisha Mohota (4.5) lost to Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Ira) (5.5); J. Deepan Chakkravarthy (5) drew with Saheli Dhar-Barua (5); G.N. Gopal (4.5) lost to C.J. Arvind (5.5); Shashikant Kutwal (5.5) bt G. Rohit (4.5); Harika Dronavalli (5) drew with D. Muthu Priyadarshana (Sri) (4.5); Eesha Karvade (4) lost to Swati Ghate (5); Vendant Goswami (5) bt H. Nilavoli (4); S. Nabeela Farheen (4) lost to Himanshu Sharma (5); J.E. Kavitha (4) lost to Mohammad Arif (5); P.D.S. Girinath (4.5) bt C. Delphin (3.5); Y. Pratibha (4.5) bt Ahmed Minhazuddin (Ban) (3.5); Liza A. Shamina (Ban) (3.5) drew with Himanshu Kumar (3.5); Abhyudyaya Rajpurohit (3) drew with K. Narayanan (3.5); Thushari Mahawaththa (Sri) (4) bt Sofia V. James (1.5); Manjula V. James (3) bt Usha Upadhyaya (1.5).

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