The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Fortune favours Arun Prasad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 31, 2004

Sport

Sport - Chess

Fortune favours Arun Prasad

By Rakesh Rao

BIKANER, DEC. 30. Having fought with fortitude all through, S. Arun Prasad almost deserved the generous dose of fortune at the finish. A last-round draw with Nguyen Van Huy, coupled with Deepan Chakkravarthy's missed win against G. Rohit, gave Prasad the Asian junior chess title at the Hotel Basant Vihar Palace here on Thursday.

In an exciting finish, Prasad and Deepan tied for the top spot with 7.5 points each but the Salem boy earned the title on his superior progressive score.

Deepan, winner in 2002, settled for silver while Poobesh S. Anand, last year's runner-up, claimed the bronze after a five-way tie at seven points to complete a Tamil Nadu sweep in the boys section.

Harika wins silver

The girls' title-race also ended in a tie but Hoang Thi Bao Tram edged out D. Harika in progressive count. The duo expectedly won their last round matches to finish with 9.5 points.

Soumya Swaminathan, in spite of losing to Mary Ann Gomes, received the bronze for her impressive tally of eight points. Prasad, who also became an International Master and gained a nine-game Grandmaster norm for becoming the continental junior champion, emulated Tejas Bakre in holding both the Asian sub-junior and junior titles at the same time.

Hoang, winner of the Asian under-14 title here in 2001, became a Woman International Master and earned a nine-game Woman Grandmaster norm. Due to her stupendous performance, the second seeded Vietnamese also gained 50 rating points from the competition.

At one stage, amidst mounting tension, Prasad slipped from a winning position to a seemingly lost one while Deepan looked poised for a possible victory. Since Prasad needed to at least match Deepan's result finish ahead on tie-breaker, the restlessness of the eventual champion was not difficult to gauge. Soon Prasad found a way to draw with Nguyen but the tension was far from over.

Deepan had come close to nailing Rohit but missed the winning continuation in the endgame and never got another chance in the 75-move encounter. Ironically, Rohit had given Prasad a restless night after inflicting a defeat on Wednesday.

In 24 hours, it was Rohit again who made his day by denying Deepan a victory. Meanwhile, Prasad's roommate Poobesh scored a 22-move triumph over off-form Akashayraj Kore and prayed for draws on the other leading boards. His prayers were answered as Abhijeet Gupta messed up his chances of winning against a fighting G. N. Gopal and settled for a draw.

A little earlier, M. R. Venkatesh had taken care of Arghyadip Das, the other medal contender, to help Poobesh's cause.

The results (Indians unless stated): 11th and final round:

Boys: Deepan Chakkravarthy (7.5) drew with G. Rohit (7); S. Arun Prasad (7.5) drew with Nguyen Van Huy (Vie) (6.5); Abhijeet Gupta (7) drew with G. N. Gopal (7); Arghyadip Das (6.5) lost to M. R. Venkatesh (7); S. Poobesh Anand (7) bt Akshayraj Kore (5.5); Anton Filippov (Uzb) (6.5) bt Nurdin Samakov (Krz) (5.5); Bahodir Kholmirzaev (Uzb) (6.5) bt T. U. Navin Kanna (5.5); Mehdi Hasan (Ban) (6) bt Kamal Firdaus Foudzi (Mal) (5); Johan Iskandar (Mal) (5) lost to Nikhilesh Kumar (6); Sriram Sarja (6) bt Kartikey Batra (3); Wahab Ahmad (Pak) (3) lost to Soumitra Mujumdar (5.5); Roushan Jaiswal (Nep) (2.5) lost to Mesgen Amanov (Tkm) (5.5); Abhyudaya Rajpurohit (5.5) bt Niyazklych Niyazov (Tkm) (1); M. V. Lakshminarayanan (5) bt Raveen Thrimavitharana (Sri) (3.5).

Girls: D. Harika (9.5) bt H. Sowmya (5.5); N. Sandhya (5.5) lost to Hoang Thi Bao Tram (Vie) (9.5); Mary Ann Gomes (6.5) bt Soumya Swaminathan (8); Siti Zulaikha (Mal) (6) drew with Saheli Nath (6.5); Anuprieta Patil (5.5) drew with Kruttika Nadig (6.5); N. Raghavi (6) drew with Nabeela Farheen (5.5); P. Sivasankari (5.5) drew with Bahar Hallaeva (Tkm) (5.5); Y. Prathiba (6) bt Maya Kurbanova (Tkm) (4.5); Janyl Tilenbaeva (Krg) (4) lost to P. Priya (5); J. E. Kavitha (6) bt Samanthi Wettasinghe (Sri) (1); U. G. U. Methmali (Sri) (2) lost to Irina Gevorgyan (Uzb) (5.5); Amruta Mokal (5.5) bye.

Standings: Boys: 1-2. S.Arun Prasad and Deepan Chakkravarthy (7.5 points); 3-7. S. Poobesh Anand, Abhijeet Gupta, G. N. Gopal, M. R. Venkatesh and G. Rohit (7); 8-11. Arghyadip Das, Nguyen Van Huy, Anton Filippov, Bahodir Khokmirzaev and Mehdi Hasan (6.5).

Girls: 1-2. Hoang Thi Bao Tram and D. Harika (9.5), 3. Soumya Swaminathan (8), 4-6. Kruttika Nadig, Saheli Nath and Mary Ann Gomes (6.5); 7-11. N. Raghavi, Y. Prathiba, Siti Zulaikha, P. Priya and J. E. Kavitha (6).

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