Date:01/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/01/stories/2008080162602000.htm

Sport - Chess

Three players share lead

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Arun Karthik of SRM College (Chennai) won a piece early in the game thanks to the lack of opening knowledge of his opponent, J. Malleswara Rao of Andhra Pradesh.

Sixth seed Arun is one of the three leaders at the half-way mark of the eighth Adyar Times FIDE-rating chess tournament here on Thursday.

Arun is on top with five points after five rounds and leads along with top seed S. Nitin of Salem and Ram S Krishnan (BSNL, Chennai).

Arun played the Pirc defence with the black. Rao lost his way early after selecting the Austrian attack to lose in just 26 moves.

Nitin scored an attacking win over George Daniel’s Sicilian Sveshnikov after the black side faced problems with opening theory.

With nearly 400 Elo points higher, Ram had an easy engagement against Jaswant winning from a Reti opening in 55 moves.

Second seed Praveen Kumar, Praveen Prasad, Abhilash Reddy and T.R. Shanmuganathan are tied for the fourth place with 4.5 points.

Praveen Prasad with white played a dubious (2.e5) second move against the French defence but yet managed to defeat Akash Iyer.

The only International Master competing in the tournament, D.P. Singh, withdrew as he had to play the inter-Railway competitions. Five rounds remain to be played.

Important results:

Round five: S. Nitin 5 bt George Daniel 4, Ram S. Krishnan 5 bt G. Jaswant 4, Malleswara Rao 4 lost to R. Arun Karthik 5, Saket Kumar 3.5 lost to Praveen Kumar 4.5, Praveen Prasad 4.5 bt Akash Iyer 3.5, Abhilash Reddy 4.5 bt K.V. Shantharam 3.5, T.R. Shanmuganathan 4.5 bt Shiva Murugan 3.5, Venkata Krishna 3 lost to P. Malleswaran 4, Ramnath Bhuvanesh 4 bt Santhosh Kumar 3, Gopal Shah 3 lost to Dusthageer Ibrahim 4, Senthil Kumaran 3 lost to Pratik Shriwas 4, V. Kameswaran 3 lost to T. Gowtham 4, S. Siddharth 3 lost to Nabeela Farheen 4, B. Kumaran 3.5 drew with S. Harini 3.5.

Round four: N. Navalgund lost to Nitin, Arun Srinivas lost to Ram S. Krishnan, Arun Karthik bt Senthil Kumaram, George Daniel w/o Pratik Shriwas, Shiva Murugan w/o D.P. Singh.