Sport - Chess   

Laxman nails Humpy

By Rakesh Rao

MUMBAI, JAN. 10. R.R. Laxman brought down a high-flying Koneru Humpy as the Commonwealth championship got off to a chaotic start at the Hotel Mirador here on Saturday.

Once the action commenced an hour behind schedule, top seed Nigel Short, K. Sasikiran, Pavel Smirnov, P. Hari Krishna and Surya Shekhar Ganguly were among those who chose their time to win.

In a battle in the classical lines of Kings Indian Defence, Laxman made the most of playing with white pieces. After sticking to the basics of piece-development, he chose to launch an offensive from the queen's side.

Humpy, who showed aggressive designs on the king's side, could do little as Laxman sacrificed a pawn on the queenside and recovered it a few moves later to gain the initiative.

Later, Laxman tightened the noose and left Humpy with a choice of either trading her queen for a rook and knight or simply a knight. Humpy saw the futility of continuing and resigned on the 58th move.

On the lower boards, local boy 10-year-old Aditya Udeshi stunned Sai Meera.

A little earlier, National under-11 boys champion Parimarjan Negi proved superior to the Devangi Patankar, the National girls champion in the same age-group.

The results (Indians unless stated):

First round:

Nigel Short (Eng) bt P.D.S. Girinath; P. Konguvel lost to K. Sasikiran; Pavel Smirnov (Rus) bt Gurpreet Pal Singh; S. Poobesh Anand lost to P. Hari Krishna; Alexander Fominyh (Rus) bt David Gluckman (SAF); T.S. Ravi drew with Saydali Iuldachev (Uzb); Deep Sengpupta lost to Surya Shekhar Ganguly; Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) drew with Somak Palit; Ravi Hegde drew with Sandipan Chanda; Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) drew with Prathamesh Mokal; Anup Deshmukh drew with Abhijit Kunte; R.B. Ramesh drew with B.S. Shivanandan; N. Sudhakar Babu bt Dzhumaev Marat; Uladmir Feldman (Aus) drew with Nisha Mohota.

R.R. Laxman bt Koneru Humpy; Pravin Thipsay drew with Srinivas Rao; Jayant Gokhale lost to Sergey Iskusnyh (Rus); Lanka Ravi lost to Dronavali Harika; Saptarshi Roy drew with Neelotpal Das; Sriram Jha drew with S. Meenakshi; Atanu Lahiri drew with Tejas Bakre.

S. Vijayalakshmi bt K. Visweswaran; Lim Yee Weng (Mal) drew with S. Kidambi; Niaz Murshed (Ban) drew with Sharad Tilak; K. Ratnakaran bt Mahmood Lodhi (Pak); Swati Ghate drew with Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury; D.V. Prasad drew with Rishi Pal Singh; Irina Berezina (Aus) lost to Abhijeet Gupta; M.R. Venkatesh bt Aarthie Ramaswamy; Shekhar Sahu bt Deepan Chakkravarthy.

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