Sport - Chess   

Meenakshi becomes WGM

By Rakesh Rao

S. Meenakshi

MUMBAI, JAN. 17. When Pravin Thipsay won the 1985 edition of the Commonwealth championship, the only sore point in his performance was the defeat to Nigel Short. Today, after 19 years, Thipsay did not allow the British Grandmaster any liberties. A 61-move draw not only kept Thipsay in the joint lead but also with a fair chance of winning the Commonwealth chess championship here.

After the eighth and penultimate round on Friday, Thipsay, Short and Russian GM Pavel Smirnov continued to lead the table with six points. Going by the sequence of results, the Commonwealth title is going to be decided between Short and Thipsay. Smirnov, who drew with Abhijit Kunte today, looks the best bet for the top prize in the `International Open', meant for those representing non-Commonwealth nations.

S. Meenakshi made sure of her Woman Grandmaster title-norm while Abhijeet Gupta did the needful for his second International Master norm. K. Ratnakaran and R.R. Laxman also made IM norms. M.R. Venkatesh and Satparshi Roy Chaudhury are in line for the IM title-norms on Saturday.

Meenakshi completed the formalities of becoming a Woman Grandmaster after a six-move draw with Vishal Sareen. This result gave her a nine-game norm with one round to spare. Having already gone beyond the stipulated rating of 2300, this Indian Airlines stipend-holder needed norms totalling 27 games. Her first norm came in the 2002 British championship and the second, in the Asian Women's championship in August.

The results (Indians unless stated):

Eighth round: Pravin Thipsay (6.5) drew with Nigel Short (Eng) (6.5); Abhijit Kunte (5.5) drew with Pavel Smirnov (Rus) (6.5); P. Harikrishna (6) bt Tejas Bakre (5); S. Kidambi (5.5) drew with Alexander Fominyh (Rus) (5.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5.5) drew with Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) (5.5); Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) (6) bt Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (5); Koneru Humpy (5) lost to Niaz Murshed (Ban) (6); Sergey Iskusnyh (Rus) (6) bt N. Sudhakar Babu (5); Sharad Tilak (5) lost to Lanka Ravi (6); Somak Palit (5) lost to K. Sasikiran (5.5); Sandipan Chanda (5.5) bt Anup Deshmukh (4.5); Gurpreet Pal Singh (5) drew with R.B. Ramesh (5); S. Vijayalakshmi (5.5) bt Ravi Hegde (4.5); George Michelakis (RSA) (4.5) lost to K. Ratnakaran (5.5); David Gluckman (Eng) (4.5) lost to M.R. Venkatesh (5.5); Varugeese Koshy (5) drew with R.R. Laxman (5); S. Meenakshi (5) drew with Vishal Sareen (5); S. Rishi Pal Singh (4.5) lost to S. Poobesh Anand (5.5); Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb) (5) bt Dronavalli Harika (4); Stuart Conquest (Eng) (5) bt Saptarshi Roy (4); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (4.5) drew with Vladimir Feldman (Aus) (4.5); Neelotpal Das (4.5) drew with Jayant Gokhale (4.5); Atanu Lahiri (5) bt Sriram Jha (4); Mahmood Lodhi (Pak) (5) bt J. Ramakrishna (4); D.V. Prasad (4.5) drew with Irina Berezina (Aus) (4.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (4.5) drew with Lim Yee Weng (Mal) (4.5); Nisha Mohota (4.5) drew with Himanshu Sharma (4.5); Aarthie Ramaswamy (4.5) drew with Dinesh Sharma (4.5); Chandrashekhar Gokhale (4.5) drew with Sekhar Sahu (4.5); Yogesh Gore (5) bt S. Satyapragyan (4); P.D.S. Girinath (4) lost to G.N. Gopal (5); G. Balaji (4.5) drew with P. Konguvel (4.5); Soumya Ranjan Mishra (4) lost to T.S. Ravi (5); James Coleman (Eng) (4) lost to Deep Sengupta (5); Prathamesh Mokal (4.5) drew with Vikas Sharma (4.5); Parimarjan Negi (4) lost to Rahul Shetty (5); Aswin Jayaram (3.5) lost to Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) (4.5); B.S. Sivanandan (4.5) bt N. Vinuthna (3.5); Swati Ghate (4.5) bt Y. Sandeep (3.5); D. Sai Srinivas (4.5) bt Abhishek Kelkar (3.5); K. Priyadarshan (4.5) bt K. Nikhilesh Kumar (3.5); Manthan Chokshi (3.5) lost to Aditya Udeshi (4.5).

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