Date:16/01/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/01/16/stories/2006011601851900.htm

Sport - Chess

Ganguly stretched

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda and Sriram Jha were made to work for their opening round victories but Nepal's unrated Janardhan Shrestha forced a draw with Woman Grandmaster Swati Ghate in the fourth Parsvnath Grandmasters international open chess tournament at the Bapu Samaj Sewa Kendra here on Sunday.

In keeping with the expectations of the first round of a Swiss league event, there were no surprises on the leading boards when the stronger players faced much lesser rated rivals. Ganguly, seeded two and the highest rated Indian Grandmaster in the field of 314 players, needed over four hours and 71 moves to end the resistance of Prasanna Rao.

Chanda and Sriram Jha needed 51 moves to win their respective games against Venu Madhav and Surinder Khanna. The results (Indians unless stated): First round: Sannidhya Narayan lost to Alexei Federov (Blr); Surya Shekhar Ganguly bt Prasanna Rao; Abhimanyu Poddar lost to Pavel Kotsur (Kaz); Ziaur Rehman (Ban) w.o. Sohan Phadke; Amruta Mokal lost to Abhijit Kunte; Konstantin Chernysov (Rus) bt W. A. Khan; Atul Dahale lost to Nurlan Ibraev (Kaz); Sandipan Chanda bt N. Venu Madhav; Arpit Saxena lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb); S. Kidambi bt Hemant Sharma; M. Natarajan lost to R. B. Ramesh; Tejas Bakre bt Ketaki Kulkarni; Ishmeet Singh lost to S. Vijayalakshmi; Abdulla Al-Rakib (Ban) bt Anil Bahulayan; K. V. Anil Kumar lost to Enamul Hossain (Ban); Dibyendu Barua bt Debasish Dutta; Gagan Chitkara lost to Niaz Murshed (Ban); B. S. Sivanandan bt Islam Mohd. Haziful (Ban); Surinder Khanna lost to Sriram Jha; Nadeem Abdullah lost to M. R. Venkatesh; Abhijeet Gupta bt V. Krishnamohan; Dinesh Bhandarkar lost to Alexander Raetsky (Rus); Lanka Ravi bt Chiranjan Bhuyan; R. Pandiyan lost to Anuar Ismagambetov (Kaz); R. R. Laxman bt Fenil Shah; Sahaj Grover lost to Poobesh Anand; Himanshu Sharma bt Bitan Banerjee; K. Ratnakaran bt Saurabha Shejwalkar; D. V. Ganesh lost to R. Zhumabaev (Kaz); S. Satyapragyan bt Naveen Bansal; Rajendra Biracharya (Nep) lost to Vikramaditya Kamble; Arghyadip Das bt Ameya Karandikar; Anoop Jayaraj lost to Sergei Simonenko (Tkm); P. Konguvel bt J. Mohanapriya; Santosh Baala lost to Parimarjan Negi; D. P. Singh bt Soham Karnik; Niklesh Jain lost to Suvrajit Saha; Deep Sengupta bt Ashraful Nizam Haque (Ban); Sitaram Agarwal (Nep) lost to Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury; S. Arun Prasad bt Dhara Gupta.