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Sahaj shocks Shivanandan

By Rakesh Rao

The youngest rated player Sahaj Grover (right) who defeated B.S. Shivananda in the first round of the Parsvanath International chess championship in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI OCT. 2. Before starting a game, Sahaj Grover writes `Good Luck' on his score-sheet. Today, more than fortune, it was the eight-year-old Sahaj's fortitude, that took him to the biggest victory of his budding career.

With most of the results coming on expected lines in the first round of Parvsnath International rating chess tournament, Sahaj broke the monotony by leaving B.S. Shivanandan shattered with a 62-move victory and provided the event a truly sensational start at the Babu Samaj Seva Kendra here on Thursday.

Even as Grandmasters Dmitry Svetushkin, P. Hari Krishna, Jonathan Rowson, Abhijeet Kunte, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Saidali Iuldashev, Alexander Fominyh, Sergei Ovestivitij, Marat Dhzumaev and Niaz Murshed headed for victories, Sahaj was busy planning the conquest of Shivanandan.

Sahaj, the country's youngest rated player and winner of the National under-8 title last December, gave the first hint of an upset in the making by trading his rook for a bishop and knight in the French Defence game which followed the advanced variation. Before long, the match began to attract the attention of many.

Shivanandan, rated at 2371 as compared to Sahaj's 1924, has been in good form this season. The Karnataka champion won the NTR memorial at Hyderabad in May, made a good recovery after losing the opener in the National `B' and only yesterday, finished tied third at the Saharanpur International tournament. But today was another day.

Shivanandan had to give up a rook for a bishop and a queening pawn. Later, Sahaj forced his rival to sacrifice the remaining rook for another queening pawn. During this flawless execution of his winning plan, Sahaj won the admiration of those watching, including top seed Svetushkin. When Shivanandan finally chose to resign, he had only a pawn while Sahaj was closing in with a rook, knight and a pawn.

In the midst of all the excitement surrounding the upset of the 27th seeded Shivanandan, the surprise victory of local Avinash Sethi over former World under-12 champion Deep Sengupta was pushed to the background. Sethi, winner of a board prize in the last National team champion won in 55 moves of Sicilian Defence.

Credit is also due to young Sankalp Modwal who kept last year's National `B' champion Suvrajit Saha guessing for 73 moves. Fenil Shah, another under-10 competitor, took Bangladesh GM Niaz Murshed into the fourth hour before going down.

The results (Indians unless specified):

First round: Himanshu Kumar lost to Dmitry Svetushkin (Mol); P. Hari Krishna bt K.V. Anil Kumar; P. Satyanarayan lost to Jonathan Rowson (Sco); Abhijeet Kunte bt B. Sashikant; Updesh Sharma lost to Surya Sekhar Ganguly; Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) bt Harshal Deshpande; C. R. Arun lost to Saidali Iuldashev (Uzb); Alexander Fominyh (Rus) bt G. Balachandran; Vipin Kumar lost to Sergei Ovestivitij (Ukr); Marat Dhzumaev (Uzb) bt Bipin Kumar; Mukesh Mandloi lost to Koneru Humpy; R. B. Ramesh bt Sujatha Srinivasan; P. R. Harsh gave a walkover to Sriram Kha; Lanka Ravi bt Arpit Saxena; L. D. Rao lost to S. Kidambi; Neelotpal Das bt K. V. Govindan Nambiar; Fenil Shah lost to Niaz Murshed (Ban); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhuri bt S. S. Dhopade; Navneet Sharma lost to S. Satyapragyan; M. R. Venkatesh bt M. Kunal; Yajuvendra Chahal lost to N. Sudhakar Babu; Survajit Saha bt Sankalp Modwal; Amit Kumar Gupta lost to T. S. Ravi; C. S. Gokhale bt K. V. Ramani; Dinesh Kumar Gupta lost to Prathamesh Mokal; Rahul Shetty bt Shyam Kishore Prasad; Sahaj Grover bt B. S. Shivanandan; Vishal Sareen bt Sukumar Menon; Abhishek Kelkar lost to V. Saravanan; Poobesh Anand bt Mohammad Ali; Abhishek Narain lost to P. Konguvel; G. Rohit bt Jalpan Bhatt; Abhimanyu Poddar lost to Neeraj Mishra; Nassir Wajih bt Abhimanyu Singhal; Abhinav Mathur lost to K. Visweswaran; Varugeese Koshy bt Abhishek Ravi; Abhyuday Rajpurohit lost to Himanshu Sharma; R. Balasubramanium bt Aditya Kishore; Aditya Vikram lost to Anup Deshmukh; R. R. Laxman bt Ajay Sabharwal; Ajit Singh lost to Aarthie Ramaswamy; Aminul Islam bt Akanksha Narayan; Akhileshwar Singh lost to Gurpreet Pal Singh.

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