Sport - Chess   

Soumitra holds Poobesh

By Our Special Correspondent

BIKANER NOV. 15. Just like in the previous edition of the championship at Nagpur, Pune-boy Soumitra Mujumdar came out with honours even against S. Poobesh Anand to provide the only surprise outcome of the third round of the National junior chess championship here on Saturday.

At the Veterinary College auditorium, favourite M.R. Venkatesh dismissed the challenge of Rohan Shandilya in just 23 moves and led a pack of seven players with three points each.

Soumitra, who had lost to Poobesh thrice, did not take any chances after the International Master missed a continuation that could have been a winning one. After the exchange of queens on the 20th move of this Nimzo-Indian encounter, the game slowly drifted to an ending with both players having a minor piece and two pawns each. On the 56th move, Soumitra forced a combination that would have left the players with just a pawn each. At this stage, the peace treaty was signed.

On the first of the three double-round days in the championship, Venkatesh won with black pieces against Kulmanpreet Singh and maintained his winning run against Shandilya. Following an irregular opening, Shandilya made a couple of poor moves that Venkatesh quickly exploited. On the 21st turn, Venkatesh gained a rook for knight and two moves later, Shandilya gave up.

Second seed Deepan Chakkravarthy took longer to get the better of Abhishek Das in the Sicilian Najdorf game lasting 31 moves. After a long time, Deepan won a third-round match.

Deep Sengupta, who began with a draw on Friday, won both his matches while National sub-junior champion and last year's runner-up S. Arun Prasad was somewhat lucky to escape with a draw against Sohan Das in the morning. Arun was in an inferior position and had less time when Das surprisingly made a draw-offer. In the evening, Arun made it past Premvardhan Sharma with ease.

Another minor surprise of the day was the defeat of Orissa's Soumyaranjan Mishra to Bihar's Saurav Roop in the second round. However, in the evening, Saurav went down to Akshat Khamparia, who had finished fourth last year.

The results:

Third round: M. R. Venkatesh (3) bt Rohan Shandilya (2); Abhishek Das (2) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy (3); Poobesh Anand (2.5) drew with Soumitra Mujumdar (2.5); Ranveer Bhatti (2) lost to Arghyadip Das (3); Uttam Sharma (2) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (3); Praveen Kumar (3) bt Vinay Matta (2); Jigar Thakkar (2) lost to T. Purushottaman (3); Saurav Roop (2) lost to Akshat Khamparia (3); Shrenhik Daklia (1.5) lost to Deep Sengupta (2.5); S. Arun Prasad (2.5) bt Premvardhan Sharma (1.5); Puneet Jaiswal (2.5) bt Vedprakash Srivastava (1.5); Hemal Thanki (1.5) lost to Omkar Gajanan (2.5); Swaraj Palit (2.5) bt V. Sandheep (1.5); Avi Bagdi (1.5) lost to Adway Chowdhary (2.5); Manish Uniyal (2) drew with Sohan Das (2); Arjun Tiwari (1.5) drew with Keshav Sharma (1.5); Abid Bhatt (1) lost to Soumyaranjan Mishra (2); Ravi Khanna (1) lost to Anand Raj (2); Harmeet Singh (1.5) drew with Kulmanpreet Singh (1.5); Rakesh Agarwal (1) lost to Sher Singh (2); Dhruv Agarwal (1) lost to Sohan Phadke (2); Chaitanya Vaidya (2) bt Nikhil Dewal (1); Manav Luthra (1) lost to Sagar Sadavarte (2); P. K. Arjun (1) lost to Dhyansagar Gadgil (2); Ashutosh Shukla (1) lost to Abhay Kumar Sinha (2).

Second round: Kulmanpreet Singh lost to Venkatesh; Deepan bt Ravi Khanna; Sohan Phadke lost to Poobesh; Sohan Das drew with Arun Prasad; Arghyadip bt Rakesh Agarwal; Abhijeet Gupta bt Chaitanya Vaidya; Arjun Tiwari lost to Uttam Sharma; Souvik Chakraborty lost to Praveen Kumar; Soumyaranjan Mishra lost to Saurav Roop; Nandan Buragohain lost to Jigar Thakkar; Akshat Khamparia bt Usha Upadhyaya; Asif Kathwari lost to Rohan Shandilya; Soumitra Mujumdar bt Vedprakash Sinha; Omkar Gajanan drew with Avi Bagdi; Vedprakash Srivastava drew with Swaraj Palit; Adway Chowdhary drew with Manish Uniyal; Amit Tiwari lost to Abhishek Das; Vinay Kumar Matta bt M. Kathiravan; Aditya Rathore lost to Ranveer Bhatti; T. Purushottaman bt Abhudaya Rajpurohit; Deep Sengupta bt Mitali Patil; Kartikey Batra lost to Puneet Jaiswal; Premvardhan Sharma bt Bipin Kumar; Keshav Sharma bt Amiya Koradikar; Shrenhik Daklia bt Janak Shah; V. Sandheep bt Jalpan Bhatta; Ramdev Choudhary lost to Himal Thanki.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

Cricket

• End of a glorious chapter
• Bichel, Hogg looking forward to final
• Rajasthan bundled out for 97
• Mumbai dismisses Delhi cheaply
• Ananthapadmanabhan checks Railways
• Steady start for Karnataka
  
  Tennis
  
• Akgul subdues Megha, clinches title
  
  Badminton
  
• Ensure a strong base, advices Yong Yi
  
  Chess
  
• Humpy continues run; third defeat for Aarthie
• Soumitra holds Poobesh
  
  Golf
  
• Ashok Kumar bags Masters title
  
  Racing : Motor
  
• Karandip in lead
  
  

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu