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Seven-year-old Pranali stuns Praveen

By Our Special Correspondent

NAGPUR OCT. 19. Seven-year-old Pranali Patil did struggle to reach the farthest rank on the board. Apart from this `minor problem', the youngest participant of the National junior (under-10) chess championship had no difficulty in nailing 25th seed C. Praveen Kumar.

Pranali's victory was obviously the high point on Saturday even as the top 11 seeds led by International Master P. Magesh Chandran, posted easy victories on the opening day of the event at the MLA Hostel Hall.

The round also saw a few unrated players make merry at the expense of seeded players. Y. Pratibha, seeded 12, was held by Sunny Purohit after 22nd seed Akshayraj Kore had signed the peace-treaty with Puneet Jaiswal.

Prominent among those who failed to get going were Soumya Ranjan Mishra, Sudhir Kumar Sinha and Rohan Shandilya, seeded 14 to 16. They lost to unrated rivals after making dubious moves in the middle-game of their respective matches.

But the cynosure of all eyes was Pranali. A student of Aurangabad's Holy Cross School and Palande Chess Academy, Pranali was restless for most part of the match against Praveen as she found her chair too low for her liking. But she did not allow this irritant to have any impact on the match. She went about her job of defending the position well and eventually punished Praveen in their French Defence game lasting 36 moves.

However, Pranali's elder sister, 10-year-old Mithali failed to get past 19th seed Akshat Khamparia. She came under tremendous time-pressure and the one-pawn deficit proved decisive.

Pratibha, the highest ranked player not to win today, was engaged in a long battle against Purohit. In an ending where both players had their bishops controlling the dark squares besides an equal number of pawns, Pratibha tried to win on time but Purohit proved equal to the task.

Earlier, the 11 top seeds who won with different degrees of ease were Magesh, M. R. Venkatesh, S. Poobesh Anand, Prathamesh Mokal, Arghyadip Das, Preetham Sharma, Saptarshi Roy, Abhijeet Gupta, Ram Krishnan, P. Phoobalan and R. Siddharth.

The results: First round : Ajeesh Anthony lost to P. Magesh Chandran; M. R. Venkatesh bt Anoop Jairaj; M. Manoj lost to S. Poobesh Anand; Prathamesh Mokal bt Jitesh Gandhi; Satchidanand Tripathi lost to Arghyadip Das; Preetham Sharma bt Suman Suchitra Das; Swapnil Dhopade lost to Saptarshi Roy; Abhijeet Gupta bt Aniruddha Deshpande; Bhushan Shriwas lost to Ram Krishnan; P. Phoobalan bt H. Chandrasekhar; Neeraj Gabhane lost to R. Siddharth; Y. Pratibha drew with Sunny Purohit; Pravin Ghalay lost to S. Arun Prasad; Soumya Ranjan Misra lost to B. Shivchaitanya; Shailesh Jaiswar bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha; Rohan Shandilya lost to Jigar Thakkar; Vishal Thakre lost to G. N. Gopal; Pradip Ghosh bt Aniket Patni; Mitali Patil lost to Akshat Khamparia; Bharat Gupta bt Kamlesh Limaye; Shreyansh Daklia lost to Puneet Jaiswal; Akshayraj Kore drew with Ajay Kumar Gupta; Amit Kumar Gupta lost to Swaraj Palit; Arjun Tiwari gave a walkover to Abhay Kumar Sinha; Pranali Patil bt C. Praveen Kumar; M. Abhirama bt Manjit Singh; B. Adithya lost to D. Sai Srinivas; Pratik S. Shriwas bt Nagesh Patil; Kapil Gupta lost to Gurpreet Singh Maras; Omkar Patwardhan bt Ajit Singh Aulakh; Aniket Pawshe bt Rajesh Agarwal; H. D. Jagdish bt Debasis Das; Amrish Joshi lost to Ayan Lahiri; Dushyant Das bt G. Chaitanyakumar; Shrenhik Daklia drew with Soumitra Majumdar; Santosh Sapkal bt S. Shreyas; Anshuman Purankar drew with Mohd. Tariq Ummer Khan; Preet Singh Kulman bt S. Yashas; Prashant Kharvi lost to M. Vinay Kumar; Nayandeep Kotangale bt Nachiket Vanikar; Nipun Chowrasia lost to Uttam Sharma; M. Satyajit bt Amarendra Vaidya; Kaustav Barat drew with Ranveer Singh Bhatti; Abhishek Das drew with Sankalp Modwal; Imran Shikalgar lost to Sohan Phadke; Harshal Deshpande bt Sheik Mohammad Abid; B. G. P. Mohapatra lost to Arun Sreenivas; Pranjal Phukan bt Prabhav Trivedi; Abhishek Narain lost to K. Sujeesh; V. Haribalu bt Amit Tiwari; Mandar Joshi drew with Baisakhi Das; Sourav Chakraborty bt P. Pawan; Kranti Kumar lost to Subodh Lakhey; Hardik Jha drew with Shival Jethi; S. K. Upadhayaya bt R. Chaitanya; Danny Gregory drew with Mohit Jethi; Rishi Kapoor bt K. Pavan Kumar; C. Mahesh Babu bye.

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