The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Prasad, Hoang in sight of title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 29, 2004

Sport

Sport - Chess

Prasad, Hoang in sight of title

By Rakesh Rao

BIKANER, DEC. 28. Kyrgyzstan's Nurdin Samakov did a big favour to title-aspirant S. Arun Prasad when he held back nearest challenger Deepan Chakkravarthy in the ninth round of the Asian junior chess championship here on Tuesday.

After the 11-move draw with G.N. Gopal kept Prasad in the lead with seven points, Samakov fought from a difficult position to thwart Deepan's designs on the second board. For the better part of this 46-move deadlock, Deepan was in a winning position but failed to land the knockout punch on his staggering opponent.

The draw meant Deepan's tally stood at six points, same as Gopal. Since Prasad enjoys the best progressive score in the field, he needs to just draw the remaining two rounds to emerge as the champion. The progressive scores are taken into account to break a tie.

In fact, the matches on the third and fourth boards also ended in 46-move draws. Abhijeet Gupta tossed away to promising position and allowed T. U. Navin Kanna to force a creditable result. Poobesh Anand and G. Rohit produced a similar verdict on the fourth board.

In the midst of draws, Arghyadip Das stood out for his fine triumph over top seed Anton Filippov. The Uzbek miscalculated a tactical shot and failed to recover the knight. This lead to his resignation after 48 moves.

Second seed M.R. Venkatesh earned a hard-fought victory over Soumitra Mujumdar in the day's longest match lasting four and a half hours.

The results (Indians unless stated, ninth round):

Boys: S. Arun Prasad (7) drew with G. N. Gopal (6); Deepan Chakkravarthy (6) drew with Nurdin Samakov (Krz) (5.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5.5) drew with T. U. Navin Kanna (5.5); S. Poobesh Anand (5.5) drew with G. Rohit (5.5); Arghyadip Das (6) bt Anton Filippov (Uzb) (4.5); Soumitra Mujumdar (4.5) lost to M. R. Venkatesh (5.5); Mehdi Hasan (Ban) (4) lost to Akshayraj Kore (5.5); Nguyen Van Huy (Vie) (5) bt Mesgen Amanov (Tkm) (4); Bahodir Kholmirzaev (Uzb) (4.5) drew with Nikhilesh Kumar (4); Abhyudaya Rajpurohit (4) drew with Sriram Sarja (4); Johan Iskandar (Mal) (4) drew with Kamal Firdaus Foudzi (Mal) (4); Raushan Jaiswal (Nep) (2.5) lost to M. V. Lakshminarayanan (4); Wahab Ahmad (Pak) (3) drew with Raveen Thrimavitharana (Sri) (3.5); Kartikey Batra (3) bt Niyazov Niyazklych.(Tkm) (1).

Girls: Hoang Thi Bao Tram (Vie) (8) bt Y. Prathiba (5); Mary Ann Gomes (5) drew with D. Harika (7.5); Bahar Hallaeva (Tkm) (4.5) lost to Soumya Swaminathan (7); N. Raghavi (4.5) lost to Kruttika Nadig (5.5); Saheli Nath (5.5) bt Amruta Mokal (4.5); Nabeela Farheen (4) lost to Siti Zulaikha (Mal) (5); P. Priya (4) lost to J. E. Kavitha (5); N. Sandhya (5) bt Maya Kurbanova (Tkm) (4); Janyl Tilenbaeva (Krg) (4) drew with Irina Govergyan (Uzb) (4); Anuprieta Patil (4.5) bt Samathi Wettasinghe (Sri) (1); U. G.Y.Methmali (Sri) (2) lost to P. Sivasankari (4); H. Sowmya (4.5) bye.

10th round pairings:

Boys: Rohit-Prasad; Gopal-Das; Kanna-Deepan; Venkatesh-Poobesh; Kore-Abhijeet; Samakov-Bahodir; Mujumdar-Nguyen; Thrimavitharana-Filippov; Sarja-Lakshminarayanan; Amanov-Rajpurohit; Batra-Hasan; Nikhilesh-Ahmad; Foudzi-Jaiswal; Niyazklych bye.

Girls: Siti-Hoang; Harika-Kavitha; Soumya-Prathiba; Saheli-Mary; Kruttika-Sandhya; Maya-Bahar; Amruta-Sivasankari; Irina-Anupreita; Sowmya-Methmali; Samanthi-Raghavi; Nabeela-Janyl; Priya bye.

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