The Hindu : Koshy holds Short on day of upsets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 13, 2004

Sport

Sport - Chess

Koshy holds Short on day of upsets

By Rakesh Rao

Varugeese Koshy (right) waits for Nigel Short to make a move. — Photo: Vivek Bendre

MUMBAI, JAN. 12. Tall or short, young or not-so-young, the Indian players are busy catching Nigel Short well short of the form the top-seeded British GM was expected to display in the Commonwealth Chess Championship.

After the diminutive Abhijeet Gupta, it was the turn of Varugeese Koshy, the tallest player in the country, to deprive the World No. 17 the taste of victory in an eventful third round here on Monday.

The 45-year-old Koshy, an International Master from ONGC, Chennai, produced the performance of his long career to dish out of 71-move draw and made Short leave the playing hall in a huff.

Koshy's was not the only spectacular performance. Chandrashekhar Gokhale, also an IM, brought down seventh seed and Short's compatriot Stuart Conquest. Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury accounted for ninth-seeded Uzbek GM Shukhrat Safin, Koshy's roommate Vishal Sareen trapped GM Sandipan Chanda in a checkmating net and Prathamesh Mokal scored over the country's latest GM R.B. Ramesh.

Amidst all the excitement, P. Hari Krishna took the sole possession of the lead by overpowering birthday-girl Dronavalli Harika. In the matches involving the other overnight leaders, K. Sasikiran drew in just 17 moves with National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Pavel Smirnov held George Michalakis.

Coming back to Koshy's feat, this was the kind of result few would have imagined. The Pelican game saw Short come up with a theoretical, but delayed, knight-sacrifice for three pawns. Koshy's held on to the position and gradually improved it. Had Koshy not chosen for the exchange of queens while facing pressure from the clock, he could have emerged in a better position. But once Koshy's choice allowed Short to consider some promising continuations, the Grandmaster looked slightly better off. But Short mishandled the position and Koshy came out with honours even.

Like Koshy, another experienced IM D.V. Prasad did well to hold sixth seed Uzbek GM Saidali Iuldashev while Woman IM S. Meenakshi produced a similar result against Bangladesh GM Niaz Murshed.

The results (Indians unless stated):

Third round: Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2.5) drew with K. Sasikiran (2.5); Pavel Smirnov (Rus) (2.5) drew with George Michelakis (RSA); Dronavalli Harika (2) lost to P. Hari Krishna (3); Nigel Short (Eng) (2) drew with Varugeese Koshy (2); Alexander Fominyh (Rus) (2.5) bt Abhijeet Gupta (1.5); D. V. Prasad (2) drew with Saidali Iuldashev (Uzb) (2); Stuart Conquest (Eng) (1.5) lost to Chandrashekhar Gokhale (2.5); Vishal Sareen (2.5) bt Sandipan Chanda (1.5); Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) (2.5) bt B. S. Sivanandan (1.5); S. Satyapragyan (1.5) lost to Abhijit Kunte (2.5); R. B. Ramesh (1.5) lost to Prathamesh Mokal (2.5); Pravin Thipsay (2) drew with N. Sudhakar Babu (2); T. S. Ravi (2) drew with Sergey Iskusnyh (Rus) (2); Atanu Lahiri (2) drew with Neelotpal Das (2); Sriram Jha (2) drew with Nisha Mohota (2); K. Ratnakaran (2) drew with Tejas Bakre (2); K. Nikhilesh Kumar (2) drew with S. Kidambi (2); Niaz Murshed (Ban) (2) drew with S. Meenakshi (2); Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) (1) lost to Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (2.5); Lanka Ravi (1) lost to Soumya Ranjan Mishra (2.5); S. Vijayalakshmi (2) bt V.S. Negi (1); Parimarjan Negi (1.5) lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) (2); M.R. Venkatesh (2) bt H. Venkatesh (1.5); K. Priyadarshan (1.5) lost to Koneru Humpy (2); Aditya Udeshi (1.5) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy (2); Rakesh Ranjan (1.5) lost to Himanshu Sharma (2); Rahul Shetty (2) bt Siti Zulaikha (Mal) (1); Dinesh Kumar Sharma (2) bt Meghan Gupte (1); Aswin Jayaram (1.5) drew with P. D. S. Girinath (1.5); P. Konguvel (2) bt P. Priya (1); S. Poobesh Anand (2) bt Chaitanya Vaidya (1); Y. Sandeep (1.5) drew with Gurpreet Pal Singh (1.5); Viraf Avari (1) lost to Somak Palit (2); Ravi Hegde (2) bt C. R. G. Krishna (1); Anup Deshmukh (2) bt Yash Agarwal (1).

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