The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Venkatesh crushes Laxman

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 20, 2004

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Sport - Chess

Venkatesh crushes Laxman

By Arvind Aaron

CHENNAI, JULY 19. Top seed and National junior champion M.R. Venkatesh crushed the overnight leader, second seed and National lightning champion, R.R. Laxman in the sixth round of the 4th Adyar Times FIDE rating chess tournament on Monday morning.

Former National `A' player, M.B. Muralidharan sacrificed his rook and later offered his queen before shattering the defence of Ram S. Krishnan to win in 31 exciting moves with the black pieces. Muralidharan now shares the top place with Venkatesh on 5.5 points.

Venkatesh played the Moscow attack with the white pieces against the Sicilian defence of Laxman and maintained a good knight versus bad bishop advantage almost till the end. Trooping his rooks and queen into the enemy territory, he won material and the game in 50 moves.

The third place is shared by six players — Sudhakar Babu, IM Poobesh Anand, Joerg Schwalfenberg, C. Praveen Kumar, Navin Kanna and Laxman — with five points.

Sixth round results: M.R. Venkatesh 5.5 bt R.R. Laxman 5, Ram S. Krishnan 4.5 lost to M.B. Muralidharan 5.5, Poobesh Anand 5 bt S.P. Sethuraman 4, M. Kunal 4 lost to N. Sudhakar Babu 5, Joerg Schwalfenberg 5 bt K. Gopalakrishnan 4, C. Praveen Kumar 5 bt V. Hari Balu 4, T.U. Navin Kanna 5 bt R. Siddarth 4, O.T. Anil Kumar 4.5 drew V. Raghavendra 4.5, K.V. Shantharam 4.5 drew with R. Uttam Sharma 4.5, C. Siva Kumar 3.5 lost to V. Hariharan 4.5, G. Dinesh Kumar 4 drew with S.R. Radha 4, M. Shyam Sundar 3.5 lost to M. Vinoth Kumar 4.5, Sai Meera Ravi 4.5 bt H. Nilavoli 3.5, P. Maheswaran 4.5 bt K. Narayanan 3.5, R.S. Santhos Baala 3.5 lost to R. Arun Karthik 4.5, P. Siva Sankari 4.5 bt S.K. Talwar 3.5, S. Raghavender 4 drew R. Rajesh 4, R. Muralidhran 4.5 bt R.K. Athavan 3.5, R. Ashwath 4 drew with Anish Das Sarma 4, P. Priya 4 bt J. Deepak Kumar 3, R. Aswin 3 lost to B. Adhiban 4.

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