Sport - Chess

Harikrishna heads list of upset seeds

By P.K. Ajith Kumar

Photo: Vivek Bendre

Defending champion P. Harikrishna (left), who lost to Neelotpal Das, contemplating his next move in the fourth round of the Commonwealth chess championship in Mumbai on Tuesday.

MUMBAI APRIL 22. It was quite a day at Hotel Tulip Star, the venue of the Commonwealth chess championship. To keep track of the upsets on Tuesday was a bit like trying to simplify cricket's Duckworth-Lewis method.

Counting the joint leaders was less difficult; there are a dozen of them at the end of the fourth round. Mind you, there were just half of them when the players took breakfast on the poolside, facing the Juhu Beach.

First the casualties. Defending champion and sixth seed Pendyala Harikrishna was beaten by the highly talented Kolkata lad Neelotpal Das, who's on kind of a comeback trial. If Harikrishna could fall, Koneru Humpy couldn't be far behind. The 19th seed and India's youngest GM ran into her nemesis, 19-year-old Prathamesh Mokal from Pune and lost yet again.

But there were bigger shocks. British champion R.B. Ramesh from Chennai outwitted ninth seed Tahir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan. It was in fact a double delight for Ramesh, as his fiancée and National women's `A' champion Aarthie Ramaswamy had, much earlier, shocked International Master (IM) Reefat Bin Sattar of Bangladesh in spectacular fashion.

The cup of woe was not yet full for Bangladesh, as Ziaur Rahman, the 11th seed who is having a horrendous time, blundered his way to an unexpected loss to the 14-year-old Hyderabad lad G. Rohit, who is doing no harm to Andhra's reputation as an emerging power in Indian chess.

That was not all. Local GM Pravin Thipsay was held to a draw by Poobesh Anand; Tejas Bakre, who's certainly not having a nice time, lost to Anup Deshmukh, and Vikramaditya Kamble shocked Sriram Jha.

However, there was a semblance of sanity on the top five boards, though the top two seeds, Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan and India's Krishnan Sasikiran were forced to settle for draws, with Vietnam's Nguyen Anh Dung and Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran respectively.

The four were joined in the lead by Shukhrat Safin of Uzbekistan, Evgeny Vladimirov of Kazakhstan, Ruslan Sherbakov of Russia, Zhang Peng Xiang of China and the four Indians, Abhijit Kunte, Dibyendu Barua, Neelotpal and Ramesh, all with 3.5 points.

Harikrishna mishandled the opening, as Neelotpal adopted Slav Defence. He made too many passive moves to give Black the edge. Neelotpal enhanced his position by capturing a centre pawn on the 27th move. In desperation White sacrificed a couple of pawns, but resigned after 36 moves.

Ramesh, playing on the white side of French Tarrasche, surprised Vakhidov with a rarely played line and watched in delight his rival taking up 70 minutes for six moves in the opening. The higher seed resigned after 48 moves, unable to withstand a devastating attack.

Aarthie had an even easier time, romping home in 19 moves after employing Sicilian Defence. She sacrificed two centre pawns and offered her rook before Sattar knew what hit him.

Harika outwitted Rakib in 27 moves of King's Indian Defence. Kasmidzhanov and Nguyen reached a dead draw rook ending and signed the peace treaty after 38 moves of Queen's Gambit Declined. There was more excitement on the adjacent board where Sasikiran surprised Maghami - it was the eighth meeting between the two - with a King's pawn push. But the Iranian himself sprang a surprise, replying with Sicilian Dragon.

"I didn't expect that,'' said the Chennai lad later. The game ended in 73 moves with Maghami giving perpetual checks. ``I had some chances earlier, yes,'' said Sasikiran, "but both of us were under time pressure. So it was a fair result in the end I guess.''

Important results (fourth round; Indians unless otherwise specified): Nguyen Anh Dung (Vie) 3.5 drew with Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzb) 3.5; Krishnan Sasikiran 3.5 drew with Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Ira) 3.5; Dibyendu Barua 3.5 drew with Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) 3.5; Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) 3 drew with Vasilios Kotronias (Cyp) 3; Evgeny Vladimirov (Kaz) bt Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb) 2.5; Pendyala Harikrishna 2.5 lost to Neelotpal Das 3.5; Lanka Ravi 2.5 lost to Ruslan Sherbakov (Rus) 3.5; Zhang Peng Xiang (Chn) 3.5 bt G.B. Prakash 2.5; R.B. Ramesh 3.5 bt Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) 2.5; Surya Shekhar Ganguly 3 drew with Saptarshi Roychowdhury 3; Abhijit Kunte 3.5 bt R.R. Laxman 2.5; Ravi Hegde 2.5 lost to Maxim Sorokin (Arg) 3.5; G. Rohit 3 bt Ziaur Rahman 2; T.S. Ravi 2.5 drew with Igor Rausis (Lat) 2.5; Atanu Lahiri 2 lost to Alexander Fominyh (Rus) 3; Abhijeet Gupta 2 lost to Ruslan Pogorelov (Ukr) 3; R. Balasubramanium 2 lost to Sandipan Chanda 3; Anup Deshmukh 3 bt Tejas Bakre 2; Reefat Bin Sattar (Ban) 2 lost to Aarthie Ramaswamy 3; Vikramaditya Kamble 3 bt Sriram Jha 2; Niaz Murshed 3 bt K. Visweswaran 2; Nisha Mohota 2 lost to S.Vijayalakshmi 3; Abdulla Al Rakib 2 lost to D. Harika 3; D.V. Prasad 3 bt Nasir Ahmad 2; Sekhar Sahu 3 bt B.S. Sivanandan 2; Suvrajit Saha 3 bt Amit Kumar Medda 2; K. Ratnakaran 2.5 drew with J. Ramakrishna 2.5; Saimeera Ravi 2 lost to Deepan Chakravarthy 3; V. Saravanan 3 bt K. Nikilesh Kumar 2; Prathamesh Mokal 2.5 bt Koneru Humpy 1.5; Poobesh Anand 2 drew with Praveen Thipsay 2; Roktim Bandyopadhyay 2 drew with M. Srinivas Rao 2; Deep Sengupta 2.5 bt M.R. Venkatesh 1.5; Swati Ghate 1.5 lost to Rahul Shetty 2.5; Dinesh Kumar Sharma 2.5 bt Tania Sachdev 1.5.

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