Date:21/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/21/stories/2008122154581500.htm

Sport - Chess

Ram S. Krishnan draws with Laxman

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Ram S. Krishnan of BSNL, Chennai stopped the winning run of leader R.R. Laxman, also of Chennai, by getting a draw in the seventh round of the St. Joseph’s National under-25 chess championship here on Saturday.

Teenaged schoolboy V.A.V. Rajesh of Chennai scored over Navin Kanna with the black pieces to cut the lead of Laxman from one point to just half a point. Laxman leads with 6.5 points and Rajesh is on six points.

The third place is shared by three players, P. Sivasankari, Ram S. Krishnan and P. Karthikeyan on 5.5 points.

Rajesh exploited the weird placement of both the white bishops by winning the central pawn in a tactic involving the back rank and soon the higher rated Navin Kanna went down fighting in 42 moves.

Siddharth gave a knight for a pawn and lost without much fight against Karthikeyan on board three. Board four also saw the knight being dropped in a pin when Ajay Srikanth overlooked it to lose to Sivasankari.

Important results (round seven): Ram S. Krishnan 5.5 drew with R.R. Laxman 6.5, Navin Kanna 5 lost to V.A.V. Rajesh 6, P. Karthikeyan 5.5 bt R. Siddharth 4.5, Ajay Srikanth 4.5 lost to P. Sivasankari 5.5, Prathamesh Mokal 4.5 drew with Arjun Tiwari 5, Deep Sengupta 5 bt S. Ganesh Babu 4, Nimmy George 4.5 drew with G. Akash 4.5, Dushyant Das 4 lost to Pradeep Kumar 5, Anand Naik 4 lost to V. Haribalu 5, S. Prasannaa 4 lost to Anand Sivasankar 4.5.