The Hindu : Bharat stuns Magesh

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 21, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Bharat stuns Magesh

By Our Special Correspondent

NAGPUR OCT. 20. Usually, a 11-round competition, like the ongoing National junior chess championship here, is not expected to come alive until it is four to five rounds old. But some unforeseen action injected by some lesser-known players in this event has already seen some of the leadings seeds, including favourite P. Magesh Chandran, suffer embarrassment by the end of the third round itself.

With Magesh, a former champion and the only International Master in the fray, crashing to a 27-move defeat against 20th seed Bharat Gupta, second seed M. R. Venkatesh headed the seven-player leaders' bunch. Others with three points were, Arghyadip Das, P. Phoobalan, R. Siddharth, Arun Prasad, Akshat Khamparia, besides Bharat.

In fact, Magesh was not the only one among the top-10 seeds to have an off-day on Sunday. Six others, too, struggled at work.

Third seed and National under-18 champion S. Poobesh Anand reluctantly agreed to a draw after 53 moves against Pratik Shriwas, sixth seed Preetham Sharma was held by Swaraj Palit just as eighth seed Abhijeet Gupta dropped half-a-point to Gurpreet Singh Maras.

Earlier, in the second round, fourth seed Prathamesh Mokal split a point with B. Vinay Kumar before seventh seed Saptarshi Roy paid the penalty for grossly underestimating local boy Nayandeep Kotangale. Ninth seed Ram S. Krishnan drew with M. Satyajit.

Coming back to the biggest upset of the championship, Magesh had looked well placed in the opening phase of his Catalan game against Bharat, a former Rajasthan champion, before an oversight cost him the match. A dubious knight-move by Magesh allowed his rival a tactical line following which, one of Bharat's queenside pawns squeezed its way to the seventh rank. Thereafter, Magesh could do little as Bharat exerted pressure with one of his rooks and threatened to cause immense damage. Magesh saw the inevitable and resigned.

The other major upset was the defeat of Saptarshi Roy, who had finished 13th in the National `B' after scoring 9.5 points earlier this month at Jalandhar. Perhaps, it was this heady performance that made him opt for a premature kingside pawn-roll even when Kotangale had not castled.

Kotangale attacked from the queenside and followed a very simple winning plan to humble Saptarshi. In the evening, though Kotangale lost, Saptarshi quickly defeated Delhi-boy Sankalp Modwal.

Meanwhile, Saturday's star seven-year-old Pranali Patil lost both her matches today while 12th seed Y. Pratibha and 16th seed Rohan Shandilya put their first-round woes to win both their matches.

The results:

Third round: Bharat Gupta (3) bt P. Magesh Chandran (2); M. R. Venkatesh (3) bt Puneet Jaiswal (2); Pratik Shriwas (2.5) drew with S. Poobesh Anand (2.5); Omkar Patwardhan (2) lost to Arghyadip Das (3); Preetham Sharma (2.5) drew with Swaraj Palit (2.5); Abhijeet Gupta (2.5) drew with Gurpreet Singh Maras (2.5); P. Phoobalan (3) bt C. Mahesh Babu (2); Nayandeep Kotangale (2) lost to R. Siddharth (3); V. Haribalu (2) lost to S. Arun Prasad (3); Aniket Pawshe (2) lost to Akshat Khamparia (3); Prathamesh Mokal (2.5) bt Tariq Ummer (1.5); Hardik Jha (1.5) lost to Ram Krishnan (2.5); Y. Pratibha (2.5) bt M. Vinay Kumar (1.5); Pradip Ghosh (2) drew with Ranveer Singh Bhatti (2); Akshayraj Kore (2.5) bt B. Shivachaitanya (1.5); M. Abhirama (1.5) lost to K. Sujeesh (2.5); M. Satyajit (2) drew with Soumitra Majumdar (2); Saptarshi Roy (2) bt Sankalp Modwal (1.5); Soumya Ranjan Misra (2) bt Anooj Jayaraj (1); M. Manoj (1.5) drew with Sudhir Kumar Sinha (1.5); Rohan Shandilya (2) bt Jilesh Gandhi (1); Satchidanand Tripathi (1) lost to G. N. Gopal (2); Suman Sucharit Das (1) lost to Arjun Tiwari (2); Swapnil Dhopade (2) bt D. Sai Srinivas (1); Aniruddha Deshpande (1) lost to Rakesh Agarwal (2); H. D. Jagdish (2) bt H. Chandrashekhar (1); Shailesh Jaiswar (1) lost to Ayan Lahiri (2); Dushyant Das (1.5) drew with A. Jigar Thakkar (1.5); Santosh Sapkal (2) bt Aniket Patni (1); Kulmanpreet Singh (1.5) drew with Kamlesh Limaye (1.5).

Second round: Magesh bt Dushyant Das; Ayan Lahiri lost to Venkatesh; Poobesh bt Santosh Sapkal; Vinay Kumar drew with Mokal; Arghyadip bt Kulmanpreet Singh; Uttam Sharma lost to Preetham; Saptarshi Roy lost to Nayandeep Kotangale; Sohan Phadke lost to Abhijeet; Ram Krishnan drew with M. Satyajit; Arun Sreenivas lost to P. Phoobalan; R. Siddharth bt Harshal Deshpande; Arun Prasad bt Pranjal Phukan; G. N. Gopal lost to V. Haribalu; K. Sujeesh drew with Pradip Ghosh; Akshat Khamparia bt Sourav Chakraborty; Subodh Lakhey lost to Bharat Gupta; Puneet Jaiswal bt Shailesh Jaiswar; Swaraj Palit bt Pranali Patil; B. Shivachaitanya drew with M. Abhirama; D. Sai Srinivas lost to Aniket Pawshe; Jigar Thakkar lost to Pratik Shriwas; Gurpreet Singh Maras bt S. K. Upadhayaya; Abhay Kumar Sinha lost to Omkar Patwardhan; C. Mahesh Babu bt H. D. Jagdish; Soumitra Majumdar bt Rishi Kapoor; Ajay Kumar Gupta lost to Y. Pratibha; Sunny Purohit lost to Akshayraj Kore; Tariq Ummer bt Shrenhik Daklia; Ranveer Singh bt Anshuman Purankar; Shival Jethi drew with Abhishek Das.

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