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Venkatesh, Das share lead

By Our Special Correspondent

BIKANER NOV. 17. A dull draw on the top board saw M.R. Venkatesh and Arghyadip Das remain in the lead after six rounds of the National junior chess championship at the Veterinary College auditorium here on Monday.

A tally of 5.5 points kept the duo half a point ahead of Deepan Chakkravarthy, holder Abhijeet Gupta and Chaitanya Vaidya.

Venkatesh and Das, two of the qualifiers for next month's National `A' championship, battled it out for 27 moves in Queen's Indian Defence. In this positional warfare, Venkatesh, playing black, looked a bit uncomfortably placed. Das of Goodricke Academy, Kolkata, continued to play safe and offered a draw, bringing to an end to this insipid contest.

Earlier, Venkatesh and Das had emerged joint leaders, a point ahead of an eight-player pack on four points. In the fifth round, Venkatesh had put an end to T. Purushothaman's winning run, while Das scored over C. Praveen Kumar.

In the afternoon, Deepan had to fight all the way to down Chhattisgarh's Ranveer Singh Bhatti. In a Sicilian Dragon game lasting 49 moves, Deepan gained a pawn in the middle game and gradually strengthened his position. Deepan could even afford the luxury of making some inaccurate moves and still win. Earlier, Deepan drew with Puneet Jaiswal, the lad who beat Deep Sengupta on Sunday. Jaiswal, however, went down to Chaitanya Vaidya.

Meanwhile, third-seeded IM Poobesh Anand's indifferent run continued. Playing black, he struggled to hold Omkar Patwardhan and reached four points.

The results:

Sixth round: Arghyadip Das (5.5) drew with M.R. Venkatesh (5.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (5) bt Ranveer Singh Bhatti (4); T. Purushothaman (4.5) drew with S. Arun Prasad (4.5); Sohan Phadke (4) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (5); Chaitanya Vaidya (5) bt Puneet Jaiswal (4); Omkar Patwardhan (4) drew with S. Poobesh Anand (4); Deep Sengupta (4) drew with Swaraj Palit (4); Adway Chowdhuri (4) drew with Arjun Tiwari (4); Kulmanpreet Singh (4) drew with C. Praveen Kumar (4); Akshat Khamparia (4.5) bt Abhishek Das (3.5); Rohan Shandilya (3.5) lost to Vedprakash Sinha (4.5); Soumitra Mujumdar (4) drew with Sagar Sadavarte (4); Soumyaranjan Mishra (4) bt Jalpan Bhatt (3); Shreyansh Daklia (3) lost to Jigar Thakkar (4); Vinay Matta (3.5) drew with Ashutosh Sharma (3.5); Vedprakash Srivastava (3) lost to Rakesh Agarwal (4); Amit Tiwari (3.5) drew with Sumit Grover (3.5); Dhyansagar Gadgil (3.5) bt Ravi Sohoni (3); Premvardhan (2.5) lost to Ravi Khanna (3.5); M. Anand Raj (3.5) bt Uttam Sharma (2.5);

Soham Das (3.5) bt Hemal Thanki (2.5); Mohit Jethi (2.5) lost to Bipin Kumar (3.5); Asif Kathwari (3) drew with Ameya Karandikar (3); Souvik Chakraborty (3.5) bt Abhudaya Rajpurohit (2.5); Janak Shah (3) drew with Vishal Thakre (3); Keshav Sharma (3.5) bt Shrenhik Daklia (2.5); Lintu Ramachandran (3) drew with Harmeet Singh (3); Nandan Buragohain (2) lost to Avi Bagdi (3); P.K. Arjun (3) bt Usha Upadhyaya (2).

Fifth round: Venkatesh bt Purushothaman; Praveen Kumar lost to Arghyadip; Jaiswal drew with Deepan; Arun Prasad bt Mujumdar; Saurav Roop lost to Abhijeet; Soumyaranjan lost to Phadke; Thakkar lost to Vaidya; Khamparia drew with Sadavarte; Vedprakash Sinha drew with Patwardhan; Ranveer Bhatti bt Amit Tiwari; Poobesh bt Soham Das; Uttam Sharma lost to Deep; Arjun Tiwari bt Lintu Ramachandran; Shrenhik Daklia lost to Shandilya; Swaraj Palit bt Asif Kathwari; Harmeet Singh lost to Adway Chowdhuri; Abhishek Das bt Keshav Sharma; Souvik Chakraborty lost to Kulmanpreet Singh; Abhudaya Rajpurohit lost to Vinay Matta; Hemal Thanki drew with Ravi Khanna; Rakesh Aggarwal bt Aditya Saxena; M. Anand Raj drew with Dhyansagar Gadgil; Sher Singh lost to Sumit Grover; Manav Luthra lost to Abhay Sinha; Vishal Thakre drew with Mohit Jethi.

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