The Hindu : Ganguly, Gokhale join leaders

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004

Sport

Sport - Chess

Ganguly, Gokhale join leaders

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, MARCH 17. Hopes of an Indian champion stood resurrected when National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly added to his dominating head-to-head score against defending champion and fellow-Grandmaster R.B. Ramesh and Chandrashekhar Gokhale shocked Uzbek GM Shukrat Safin to join the leaders after the 10th and penultimate round of the Parsvnath International chess tournament here on Wednesday.

With Ganguly and Gokhale catching up with the overnight leaders Kazakhstan's Pavel Kotsur, Serik Temirbaev and Uzbekistan's Saidali Iuldachev at eight points, a close finish is a certainty on Thursday.

However, in case of a tie the Indians will be placed lower due to their inferior progressive scores. On Thursday, Kotsur plays Gokhale, Ganguly meets Temirbaev and Iuldachev faces Dibyendu Barua.

This morning, the 11-move draws on the top two boards surprised none. Temirbaev and Iuldachev took no chances on the top board while Kotsur, playing black, did not mind a similar result with Koneru Humpy. Ganguly's 53-move victory with black in the Arkhengelsk variation of Ruy Lopez took his personal score to 7-1 against Ramesh from the last eight encounters. Ramesh, having tasted defeat in the same opening in the previous encounter, came up with an improvement in the middle game but Ganguly proved equal to the challenge.

Ganguly sacrificed a knight to gain a sizeable advantage. A good kingside offensive from Ganguly kept Ramesh on the defensive. Though Ramesh chose to give up the knight, he had to trade his rook for a bishop to avert an immediate loss. But Ganguly was not to be denied for long.

Like Ganguly, Gokhale, too, won with black to continue his fine run. In the Nimzo game, Gokhale was very impressive against Safin, seeded six.

Gokhale enjoyed a double-bishop advantage in the middle game but once he realised that a victory was difficult, offered a draw on the 54th move. However, Safin chose to continue but a couple of moves later bungled in an ending where the players had a rook and three pawns each. Gokhale was quick to exploit the situation to win in 70 moves.

The results (10th round): Serik Temirbaev (Kaz) (8) drew with Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb) (8); Koneru Humpy (7.5) drew with Pavel Kotsur (Kaz) (8); Dibyendu Barua (7.5) bt Sriram Jha (7.5); R.B. Ramesh (7) lost to Surya Shekhar Ganguly (8); Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) (7) lost to C.S. Gokhale (8); R. Balasubramaniam (7) lost to Georgy Timoshenko (7.5); Suvrajit Saha (6.5) lost to Sandipan Chanda (7.5); Tejas Bakre (7) drew with Arghyadip Das (7); D.V. Prasad (6.5) lost to R.R. Laxman (7.5); M.R. Venkatesh (7.5) bt C. Praveen Kumar (6.5); S. Satyapragyan (7) drew with Aminul Islam (Ban) (7); Manthan Chokshi (7) drew with Neelotpal Das (7); M. Srinivasa Rao (6.5) drew with Abdulla-Al Rakib (Ban) (6.5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (7) bt Nassir Wajih (6); Dronvavalli Harika (6.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (6.5); G.B. Joshi (6) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy (7); Rahul Shetty (7) bt Atanu Lahiri (6); R. Preetham Sharma (6.5) drew with Himanshu Sharma (6.5); V. Saravanan (7) bt K. Visweswaran (6); Pradeep Ghosh (6.5) drew with Varugeese Koshy (6.5); Dinesh Kumar Sharma (7) bt Laisram Imocha (6); Devraj Chatterjee (7) bt P. Konguvel (6); Gurpreet Pal Singh (6.5) drew with Aarthie Ramaswamy (6.5); T.S. Ravi (7) bt Amit Kumar Medda (6); Mohammad Javed (Ban) (6) lost to Deep Sengupta (7); Anup Deshmukh (7) bt Y. Sandeep (6); P. Karthikeyan (6) lost to N. Sudhakar Babu (7); Nurlan Ibraev (Kaz) (6.5) bt Soumya Ranjan Mishra (5.5); Laltu Chatterjee (6) drew with Neeraj Kumar Mishra (6); Vinod Bhagwat (6) drew with Roktim Bandyopadhyay (6); Mehdi Hasan Parag (Ban) (6) drew with Somak Palit (5.5); M.B. Muralidharan (6.5) bt Kanti Lal Dave (5.5); Vikramaditya Kamble (6.5) bt Kiran Panditrao (5.5); Martin Haag (Ger) (5.5) lost to Hariom Sharma (6.5); Ram Prakash (6.5) bt K. Rathnakaran (5.5); D. Ravishankar (6) drew with Arindam Mukherjee (6); S. Nasir Ali (6) drew with Abu Sufian Shakil (Ban) (6); Arman Monir (Ban) (5.5) lost to Sekhar Sahu (6.5); Ketan Boricha (5.5) lost to Parimarjan Negi (6.5).

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