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Balasubramaniam jumps into sole lead

By Our Chess Correspondent

Chennai July 21. Top seed R. Balasubramaniam of ICF jumped into sole lead after receiving a near gifted point from Diwakar Prasad Singh of Jamshedpur in the eighth and penultimate round of the 1st Avadi Chess Academy's FIDE rating chess tournament here at Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium in Egmore on Sunday.

Balasubramaniam, a former National `B' champion spotted a blunder on move 11 and picked up a piece to move up to 7.5 points from eight games. He is half a point ahead of the others in the 194-player competition. He needs a draw in the final round on Monday morning to win the tournament.

However, R.R. Laxman, Chennai's prodigious youngster, matched him blow for blow and won a nice game against K. Gopalakrishnan of Indian Bank in 46 moves with white pieces to keep the distance between him and the leader close. Laxman is on seven points and in clear second place.

The winner will be decided in the Balasubramaniam v Laxman game with the former needing a draw to win the tournament and the latter a win.

Balasubramaniam played the Larsen opening with the white pieces and this caught Diwakar Prasad Singh off guard in the opening. When the Jamshedpur student castled queenside with the black pieces, white responded with an anti-positional pawn thrust winning a piece, capitalising on the blunder.

What was expected to be a long and thrilling four hour battle fizzled into a half hour non-event with Baladubramaniam picking up his most easiest full point of the tournament in 18 moves.

The draws that were agreed from the third to seventh tables kept most players back at 6.5 points and less.

On the cards for the final day is a clear race for the first place between Balasubramaniam and Laxman and the rest of the players for the third prize and below.

Be it the prize list or not, two-thirds of the competitors fight for ratings and gain by playing against the one-third of the players who are rated.

Important results (round eight): R. Balasubramaniam 7.5 bt D.P. Singh 6.5, R.R. Laxman 7 bt K. Gopalakrishnan 6, A. Shankar 6.5 drew with C.J. Arvind 6.5, S. Arun Prasad 6.5 drew with S. Mari Arul 6, K.V. Shantharam 6 drew with S.R. Mishra 6, D. Lakshmana Rao 6 drew with K. Chakravarth1 6, R. Muralidharan 5.5 drew with B.T. Muralikrishnan 5.5, Hari Om Sharma 5 lost to G. Srikanth 6, M. Vinodh Kumar 5 lost to T.J. Suresh Kumar 6, C.S. Sridhar 5.5 drew with Sujit Kumar Sinha 5.5, D. Ravi Shankar 6 bt C. Delphin 5, J. Saravana Kumar 5.5 drew with Ashwani Tiwari 5.5, D. Devendrakumar 6 bt Sai Srinivas 5, T. Abhay 6 bt S. Venkatsundaram 5, Vikramaditya Kamble 5.5 bt J.E. Kavitha 5, K. Visweswaran 5.5 bt L.V. Siva Kumar 4.5, A. Arun 5 drew with T.V. Karthikeyan 5, C. Natarajan 4.5 lost to M. Vinoth Kumar 5.5, P. Poobhalan 5.5 bt Nabeela Farheen 4.5, Anirban Guharoy 5.5 bt Arjun Deepak Tiwari 4.5, Y. Prathiba 5.5 bt K.V. Anil Kumar 4.5, T.U. Navin Kanna 5 drew with C. Praveenkumar 5, G. Benoglad 5 drew with Hemant Kumar Mandhare 5, Sai Meera Ravi 5.5 bt O.T. Anil Kumar 4.5, K.K. Lochan 4.5 lost to M.J. Noohu 5.5, M.R. Sangeetha 5.5 bt Madhuri Madeo Patil 4.5, B. Adiban 4.5 lost to V. Vijay Amal Raj 5.5, Vaishak Venkat 5 drew with Adway Chowdhuri 4.5, Priyadarshini 4 lost to Binju Oommen 5, G. Dinesh Kumar 4 lost to S. Karthikeyan 5, R. Bhaskaran 4 lost to H. Nilavoli 5, S. Nitin 4.5 drew with Milind Gawade 4.5, K. Indykapalan 4.5 drew with A. Suresh Kumar 4.5, S. Raghuraman 5 bt R.K. Ranjith 4, V. Haribalu 5 bt Saravana Krishnan 4, Aswin Jayaram 4 lost to T.B. Sundar 5, Swapnil S. Dhopade 5 bt Ayshirai Choudhary 4, P. Balaji 4 lost to S.P. Sethuraman 5, K.A.D. Victor 4 lost to S. Banupriya 5, M. Vijay Anand 5 bt S. Barathi 4, V. Raghavendra 3.5 lost to Sridharan Ramanath 5.

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