Sport - Chess

Magesh, Saptarshi bounce back

By Our Special Correspondent

NAGPUR OCT. 22. Sub-juniors Abhijeet Gupta and Akshayraj Kore, jointly ahead after five rounds, battled their way to a draw in the sixth round to remain in lead with three others in the National junior chess championship on Tuesday.

The day also saw P. Magesh Chandran and Saptarshi Roy, seeded one and seven, win both their matches to join Abhijeet, Kore and P. Phoobalan in the lead with five points each at the MLA Hostel hall here.

M.R. Venkatesh, Poobesh Anand and Prathamesh Mokal, seeded in that order behind Magesh, drew their matches. Fourth seed Preetham Sharma lost again, by going down to C. Praveen Kumar in the sixth round, while fifth seed Arghyadip Das ended up losing both his games.

Abhijeet, who had lost to Kore in their previous encounter recently in the National sub-junior championship at Hyderabad, held on to an inferior position in Sicilain Najdorf after both players had declined a draw-offer each in the space of four moves. Finally, the two boys realised the futilty of continuing and agreed to split the point after 44 moves.

Earlier, in a battle between two Rajasthan players, Bhilwara-based Abhijeet scored his second straight victory over Jaipur's Bharat Gupta — the man who had hit the headlines for stunning Magesh.

Having beaten Bharat in the recent National `B' championship at Jalandhar, Abhijeet repeated the dose by brilliantly executing his winning plan. With Bharat under time-pressure, Abhijeet cut out all frills and made sure that his rival had no counterplay in an ending involving a rook each and pawns. Once Abhijeet cleaned up Bharat's pawns, the latter had no choice but to give up.

Kore, the National sub-junior runner-up, scored his fourth successive victory by stopping Arghyadip Das. Kore spurned a draw-offer from Das in their grim battle in the fifth round before proving superior. In the afternoon, Das lost to local-lad Pratik Shriwas.

Magesh stretched his winning sequence to three, past Shriwas and fellow Chennai-player Y. Pratibha. In both matches, Magesh beneffited from mistakes committed by his rivals in the opening itself.

Like Magesh, Saptarshi Roy also put back his Sunday's defeat and scored over Rakesh Agarwal and Puneet Jaiswal. Phoobalan, who missed a winning line against Gurpreet Singh Maras in the morning, got past K. Sujeesh in the sixth round.

Surprisingly, Venkatesh drew his matches today after getting into seemingly good positions. In the morning, Venkatesh not only allowed Arun Prasad to get away from a tight spot but also got himself into knots. Prasad, however, did not capitalise on Venkatesh's lapse and was content on sharing the point.

Later, Venkatesh managed to gain Gurpreet's queen for rook after the former's long tactical combination backfired in the middle-game of their Sicilian Pelican game. In the end game, it was Venkatesh's turn to err as he lost his bishop for nothing. Thereafter, Venkatesh's queen could not get the better of Gurpreet's rook and bishop.

The results:

Sixth round: Akshayraj Kore (5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (5); P. Magesh Chandran (5) bt Y. Pratibha (4); Gurpreet Singh Maras (4.5) drew with M.R. Venkatesh (4.5); S. Arun Prasad (4.5) drew with Prathamesh Mokal (4.5); Puneet Jaiswal (4) lost to Saptarshi Roy (5); K. Sujeesh (4) lost to P. Phoobalan (5); R. Siddharth (4.5) drew with Pradip Ghosh (4.5); Arghyadip Das (3.5) lost to Pratik Shriwas (4.5); C. Praveen Kumar (4.5) bt Preetham Sharma (3.5); Ram Krishnan (4.5) bt Omkar Patwardhan (3.5); G. N. Gopal (4) drew with Dushyant Das (4); Akshat Khamparia (4) drew with Pranjal Phukan (4); Bharat Gupta (4) drew with Aniket Pawshe (4); Arjun Tiwari (4.5) bt Santosh Sapkal (3.5); Poobesh Anand (3.5) drew with Abhishek Das (3.5); Arun Sreenivas (3.5) drew with Soumya Ranjan Misra (3.5); Ranveer Singh Bhatti (3.5) drew with Rohan Shandilya (3.5); Swaraj Palit (3.5) drew with V. Haribalu (3.5); D. Sai Srinivas (4) bt M. Manoj (3); Rakesh Agarwal (4) bt Amit Kumar Gupta (3); H.D. Jagdish (3.5) drew with Kapil Gupta (3.5); Subodh Lakhey (3) lost to Soumitra Majumdar (4); Shival Jethi (3) lost to Nayandeep Kotangale (4); C. Mahesh Babu (3) lost to M. Satyajit (4); Sudhir Kumar Sinha (3) drew with Sunny Purohit (3); Tariq Ummer (3.5) bt Shailesh Jaiswar (2.5); B. Shivachaitanya (2.5) lost to Kulmanpreet Singh (3.5); M. Vinay Kumar (3.5) bt B. Adithya (2.5); Uttam Sharma (3.5) bt Kaustav Barat (2.5); Sohan Phadke (3.5) bt Amit Tiwari (2.5).

Fifth round: Venkatesh drew with Arun Prasad; Mokal drew with Siddharth; Kore bt Arghyadip Das; Abhijeet Gupta bt Bharat Gupta; Phoobalan drew with Gurpreet Singh; Pratik lost to Magesh; Roy bt Rakesh Agarwal; Pratibha bt Ranveer Singh; Shandilya lost to Sujeesh; Pradip Ghosh bt H. D. Jagdish; Sapkal drew with Khamparia; Kotangale lost to Jaiswal; Pawshe drew with Arjun Tiwari; Majumdar drew with Poobesh; Preetham bt Vinay Kumar; Kulmanpreet Singh lost to Ram Krishnan; Phukan bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha; Baisakhi lost to Gopal; Manoj drew with Swaraj Palit; Barat lost to Praveen Kumar; Patwardhan bt Thakkar; Dushyant Das bt Modwal; Misra bt Patni; Sai Srinivas bt Limaye; Amit Kumar Gupta bt Lahiri; Jaiswar drew with Uttam Sharma; Satyajit bt Nagesh Patil; Abhishek Das bt S. Yashas; Adithya drew with Phadke; Pranali lost to Arun reenivas.

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