Date:18/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/18/stories/2008091857732100.htm

Sport - Chess

Maheswaran stuns second seed Laxman

Rakesh Rao

ZAMBAULIM (Goa): In a battle where no quarter was given and none asked for, little-known debutant P. Maheswaran declined a draw offer from second seed and fellow Tamil Nadu player R.R. Laxman to score his biggest career-victory ever in the third round of the Monginis National ‘B’ chess championship here.

On the first of the two double-round days, fourth-seeded Grandmaster Neelotpal Das failed to get past Andhra youngster Mehar Chinna Reddy while two other GMs Parimarjan Negi and Pravin Thipsay maintained their clean record to be among the leaders.

Maheswaran, an MCA under-graduate from Chennai, punished Laxman in Kings Indian Defence. Laxman, rated at 2498 as compared to Maheswaran’s 2241, accepted a pawn-sacrifice in a complicated position but soon lost two pawns. Thereafter, a desperate Laxman offered a draw on the 32nd move but Maheswaran played on to collect another pawn and triumphed in 54 moves.

Easy win for Negi

Earlier, top seed Negi destroyed Kerala’s vastly-experienced M.B. Muralidharan in just 29 moves to be an early winner. The 15-year-old exploited an error in the opening phase and gained sizable space advantage with active piece-play. Muralidharan hastened the end by taking a pawn that cost him his queen.

Thipsay faced his old teammate from Union Bank Ravi Hegde and won a long battle to maintain his winning streak.

The results: Third round: Parimarjan Negi (3) bt M.B. Muralidharan (2); P. Maheswaran (3) bt R.R. Laxman (2); Mehar Chinna Reddy (2.5) drew with Neelotpal Das (2.5); Prasanna Rao (2) lost to G. Rohit (3); Deep Sengupta (3) bt S. K. Sinha (2); Ravi Hegde (2) lost to Pravin Thipsay (3); M.S. Thej Kumar (2.5) drew with Manoj Panigrahi (2.5); E.P. Nirmal (2.5) drew with P. Konguvel (2.5).

S. Satyapragyan (3) bt J. Venkata Ramana (2); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (3) bt Vikas Sharma (2); Chinmay Kulkarni (2) lost to P. Karthikeyan (3); Akshayraj Kore (3) bt Anwesh Upadhyaya (2); Nirav Rajasuba (2.5) drew with Swapnil Dhopade (2.5); Suvrajit Saha (3) bt Imocha Laishram (2); Shreyansh Daklia (2) lost to Shyam Nikhil (3); Prathamesh Mokal (3) bt Gurpreet Singh Maras (2); Vinod Bhagwat (2) lost to Vidit Gujarati (3); Hemant Mandhare (2) lost to Dinesh Sharma (3); Vishnu Prasanna (2.5) drew with O.T. Anil Kumar (2.5); Rahul Sangma (3) bt J. Malleswara Rao (2); Bhakti Kulkarni (2.5) drew with Atanu Lahiri (2.5); Gajendra Singh (2) lost to N. Sudhakar Babu (3); M.R. Lalith Babu (3) bt Dushyant Das (2); Kunal (2.5) drew with B.S. Shivananda (2.5); P.K. Singh (2.5) drew with Ram Prakash (2.5); Aniruddha Deshpande (2.5) drew with Arjun Tiwari (2); T. Purushothaman (2.5) drew with Manish Joshi (2.5); C. Praveen Kumar (3) bt Rupankar Nath (2).

Sayantan Das (2) lost to Debashis Das (3); Rahul Shetty (3) bt Arvinderpreet Singh (2); Rajib Dhar (2) lost to Soumyaranjan Mishra (3); Prasenjit Datta (3) bt B.C. Tripathi (2); R. Arun Karthik (2.5) drew with Vaibhav Suri (2.5); M.C. Tanwar (3) bt Vinay Kumar Matta (2); Sekhar Sahu (2.5) drew with Shardul Gagare (2.5); R. Premnath (3) bt Atul Kumar (2); Maulik Raval (3) bt V.A.V. Rajesh (2); Souvik Chakraborty (2) lost to Joydeep Dutta (3); P.D.S. Girinath (2.5) bt Manish Parmar (1.5); K.V. Shantharam (2) drew with Himanshu Sharma (2).