The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Visweswaran draws with Sasikiran

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 05, 2005

Sport

Sport - Chess

Visweswaran draws with Sasikiran

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, JAN. 4. K. Sasikiran, Dibyendu Barua R. B. Ramesh and Russia's Alexander Fominyh trail the 17 leaders after three rounds of the Parsvnath International Open chess tournament here on Tuesday.

Most unexpectedly, Bangladesh's Aminul Islam and Javed Mohammad punished Barua and Ramesh by getting them into checkmating net. K. Visweswaran surprised everyone, including Sasikiran, by offering a draw to his Chennai-mate after attaining a position that promised a better result for him.

Vinod Kumar Sharma came up with a bishop sacrifice against Fominyh and forced a draw by repetition of moves. Sasikiran, first to admit that he was plain lucky on this day, won against Chaitanya Vaidya in second round after the youngster had overlooked a defence leading to a draw and resigned.

In the evening, Sasikiran gained from Visweswaran's offer that came after 21 moves in Sicilian's Rauzer Attack. It was the position that Visweswaran was more familiar with and Sasikiran found himself in a somewhat unknown territory. But Visweswaran chose not to press too hard for victory. Barua invited disaster by overlooking a checking mating combination to lose in mere 19 moves against Islam.

Earlier in the day, Ramesh had tried to avoid draw by repetition of moves against Mohammad in Ruy Lopez but ended up facing checkmate in 30 moves. Vinod holds Fominyh

Fominyh was visibly taken aback by Vinod's bishop sacrifice on the 12th move in their Sicilian game. The sacrifice on the seventh rank meant danger for Fominyh's castled king. Vinod was quick to press his queen and rook and forced a draw through perpetual checks in just 21 moves.

Later, youngster B. Abhiban took Fominyh to 80 moves before surrendering. Among the leaders, second seed Abhijit Kunte won an equal game against G. B. Joshi when the latter ran out of time. However, pushed into the background was Asian under-18 girls champion N. Vinuthna's victory over International Master Prathamesh Mokal.

The results (Indians unless stated): Third round: K. Visweswaran (2.5) drew with K. Sasikiran (2.5); Abhijit Kunte (3) bt G. B. Joshi (2); Aminul Islam (Ban) (3) bt Dibyendu Barua (2); Shashikant Kutwal (2) lost to Anton Filippov (Uzb) (3); C. Praveen Kumar (2) lost to B. S. Sivanandan (3); Enamul Hossain (Ban) (3) bt Mehdi Hasan (Ban) (2); Suvrajit Saha (2.5) drew with Rahul Sangma (2.5); P. D. S. Girinath (2.5) bt Saurabh Kherdekar (2.5); Abu Sufian Shakil (Ban) (2) lost to Deepsen Gupta (3); J. Ramakrishna (2.5) drew with Vishal Sareen (2.5); N. Vinuthna (3) bt Prathamesh Mokal (2); Himanshu Sharma (3) bt O. T. Anil Kumar (2); Vinod Bhagwat (2) lost to R. R. Laxman (3); S. Satyapragyan (3) bt S. P. Sethuraman (2); Akash Thakur (2.5) drew with S. Poobesh Anand (2.5); D. Sai Srinivas (3) bt Laishram Imocha (2); Amardeep Bartakke (2) lost to S. Arun Prasad (3); Gurpreet Pal Singh (2.5) drew with Puneet Jaiswal (2.5); M. S. Thej Kumar (3) bt Mohammad Javed (2); Aarthie Ramaswamy (3) bt M. B. Muralidharan (2); Anup Deshmukh (3) bt Y. Prathiba (2); Nikhilesh Kumar (2.5) drew with Varugeese Koshy (2.5); D. P. Singh (2) lost to Bohodir Holmirzaev (Uzb) (3); Karun Duggal (2) lost to R. Preetham Sharma (3); Alexander Fominyh (Rus) (2.5) bt B. Adhiban (2).

Second round: Sasikiran bt Chaitanya Vaidya; Akshat Khamparia lost to Kunte; Barua bt Ranveer Singh Bhatti; Vinod Kumar Sharma drew with Fominyh; Filippov bt V. Hari Balu; Mohammad Javed bt R. B. Ramesh; Sivanandan bt Ram Prakash; C. Natarajan lost to Hossain; Syed Mahfuzur Rahman lost to Saha; Sergie Kayumov (Uzb) lost to Nikhilesh Kumar; Mary Ann Gomes drew with C. S. Gokhale; P. Konguvel drew with Jitender Kumar Chaudhary; Vikash Sharma lost to Girinath; Deepsen Gupta bt Manthan Chokshi; Prathiba bt Vikramaditya Kamble; Sareen bt Romesh Weerawardane (Sri); Mokal bt M. R. Lalit Babu; Manish Joshi lost to Himanshu; Laxman bt Amit Kumar Medda; T. R. Shanmuganathan lost to Satypragyan; Poobesh bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha; Soumya Swaminathan lost to Sai Srinivas; D. V. Prasad drew with Nurdin Samakov (Krz); Nirav Rajasuba drew with Satchidanand Soman; Arun Prasad bt Aswin Jayaram.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport