The Hindu : Eventful day for Hari Krishna

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Eventful day for Hari Krishna

By Our Sports Reporter

BANGALORE May 27. Top-seed P. Hari Krishna was held to a draw by Neelotpal Das in the second round of the National rapid chess championship which commenced at the Koramangala Indoor Stadium here on Monday. `Neelotpal played better,' said Hari Krishna after eking out a draw.

Earlier, the top-seed opened his campaign defeating Amirbhai Roy. Hari Krishna used his favourite Kings Indian opening to unsettle Amirbhai, who lost a rook and resigned from the contest.

However Hari Krishna was in for a surprise as Neelotpal sacrificed a piece and forced a perpetual check that resulted in a draw.

"He made a few errors in his opening game but I lost the advantage as I too made errors in the middle game,'' said Neelotpal after letting the top-seed escape with a draw.

In the day's list of surprises, third seed Abhijeet Kunte gave company to P. Hari Krishna, as Karnataka's N. Sanjay held him to a draw.

The local lad employed a Queens Gambit Exchange Variation and exploited Abhijeet's F5 move in the middle game. "I actually could have won the game but I wanted to eliminate risk and hence when he offered draw, I accepted,'' said Sanjay.

Hari Krishna and Abhijeet mulled over their lapses while second seed S.S. Ganguly notched two consecutive wins to remain unbeaten in the first two rounds. In the opening round, he defeated G. Srinivasa Rao and followed it up with a one-sided victory against Visweswaran.

Ganguly had a King pawn opening which forced Visweswaran into a Nazdorf variation in the Sicilian Defence. Visweswaran however committed an error in shifting his knight to C6 in the 11th move and lost pawns in the 16th and his queen in the 17th moves.

"Ganguly completely dominated and I lost in 34 moves,'' said Visweswaran.

The results (top 10 boards):

Second round: Neelotpal Das (1.5) drew with P. Hari Krishna (1.5), S.S. Ganguly (2) bt K. Visweswaran (1), N. Sanjay (1.5) drew with Abhijeet Kunte (1.5), R.B. Ramesh (2) bt Vivek Kumar Shukla (1), Varugheese Koshy (1) lost to Dinesh Kumar Sharma (2), Devaki Prasad (2) bt R.R. Laxman (1), Aravind Shastry (1) lost to Sriram Jha (2), G.B. Prakash (1.5) drew with C.J. Aravind (1.5), R. Sidharth (1) lost to M.R. Venkatesh (2), Sunderajan Kidambi (2) bt B.S. Shivananda (1).

First round: Hari Krishna bt Amirbhai Guha Roy, G.V. Srinivasa Rao lost to S.S. Ganguly, Abhijeet Kunte bt Abhirama, Sunil Rangarajan lost to R.B. Ramesh, Dinesh Kumar Sharma bt G. Dinesh Kumar, N. Ravi Kant lost to Devaki Prasad, Sriram Jha bt Sriram Sarja, R. Sridharan lost to G.B. Prakash, M.R. Venkatesh bt Yogesh Dongre, M. Vinod Kumar lost to Sunderajan Kidambi.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport