The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Sasikiran, Laxman on top

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Friday, Jan 07, 2005

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Sport - Chess

Sasikiran, Laxman on top

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, JAN. 6. K. Sasikiran caught up with leader R. R. Laxman with two successive victories and regained his place on the top board following the sixth round of the Parsvnath International Open chess tournament here on Thursday.

The top seed overpowered M. J. Thej Kumar and B. S. Sivanandan on the second of the three double-round days of the competition. Laxman, playing white, had little difficulty in getting a 10-move friendly draw off second seed Abhijit Kunte. Earlier in the day, Laxman had moved into sole lead after a 63-move win over Preetham Sharma.

Barring Sasikiran's board, five of the top six boards ended with honours even. The top seed was engaged in an equal battle with Sivanandan until the Karnataka player played a poor rook move on the kingside and immediately invited a decisive assault.

Somehow, the quality of matches so far in the competition has been mediocre. Short and friendly draws on the leading boards continued unabated with Uzbek Anton Filippov settling for a 17-move draw with fellow-International Master S. Satyapragyan. Deep Sengupta needed just 13 moves with white pieces to convince Uzbek GM Dmitry Kayumov that a draw was a fair result.

Russian GM Alexander Fominyh, known to be slow starter, showed no hurry to join the front-runners as he took a 24-move draw from the vastly experienced Varugeese Koshy. Chennai-mates V. Saravanan and R. B. Ramesh sparred for 27 moves before agreeing to share the point.

Lower down, Dibyendu Barua was fighting to live up to his reputation. After a defeat and a draw in the first four rounds, the Kolkata GM had to settle for a draw against Uzbek teenager Nurdin Samakov in the fifth round before winning on time against Soumya Swaminathan. Winner of the bronze in the recent Asian girls championship, Soumya pointed to the possible malfunction of the clock but it was of no avail. She left the hall in tears.

The results (Indian unless stated): Sixth round: R. R. Laxman (5.5) drew with Abhijit Kunte (5); K. Sasikiran (5.5) bt B. S. Sivanandan (4.5); Anton Filippov (Uzb) (5) drew with S. Satyapragyan (5); Deep Sengupta (5) drew with Dmitry Kayumov (Uzb) (5); Varughese Koshy (4.5) drew with Alexander Fominyh (Rus) (4.5); V. Saravanan (4.5) drew with R. B. Ramesh (4.5); J. Ramakrishna (4) lost to Enamul Hossain (Ban) (5); P. Konguvel (4) lost to R. Preetham Sharma (5); Mehdi Hasan (Ban) (5) bt P. D. S. Girinath (4); Laishram Imocha (4) lost to N. Sanjay (5); Prathamesh Mokal (4.5) drew with R. Balasubramanium (4.5); Vinod Kumar Sharma (4.5) drew with Himanshu Sharma (4.5); Abhijeet Gupta (4.5) drew with C. Praveen Kumar (4.5); Bahodir Holmirzaev (Uzb) (5) bt Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (4); D. V. Prasad (5) bt Vikrant Chole (4); M. B. Muralidharan (5) bt K. Ramu (4); Debashish Das (4) lost to D. Sai Srinivas (5); Saptarshi Roy (4.5) bt Abu Sufian Sakil (Ban) (3.5); Sergey Kayumov (Uzb) (4.5) bt N. Vinuthna (3.5); Vinod Bhagwat (4) drew with C. S. Gokhale (4); Vishal Sareen (4) drew with Akash Thakur (4); K. Ratnakaran (4.5) bt Aarthie Ramaswamy (3.5); Ranveer Singh Bhatti (4.5) bt Satchidanand Soman (3.5); S. Arun Prasad (4) drew with V. Hari Balu (4); Aravind Shastri (4.5) bt Ram Prakash (3.5); Mary Ann Gomes (4.5) bt M. S. Thej Kumar (3.5); V. S. Negi (3.5) lost to Anup Deshmukh (4.5).

Fifth round: Satyapragyan drew with Deep; Preetham lost to Laxman; Thej lost to Sasikiran; Kunte bt Arun Prasad; Deshmukh lost to Filippov; Dmitry bt Sai Srinivas; Balaji lost to Sivanandan; Hossain drew with Koshy; Balasubramanium drew with Konguvel; Sanjay drew with Ramakrishna; Fominyh bt Rahul Sangma; Ramesh bt Saurabh Kherdekar; Vinuthna drew with Roy; Saha lost to Imocha; Aarthie drew with Sergey; Girinath bt Puneet Jaiswal; Vikramaditya Kamble lost to Vinod Kumar Sharma; Hari Balu drew with Sareen; Nikhilesh Kumar lost to Mokal; Himanshu Sharma bt Vikas Sharma; Lalit Babu lost to Abhijeet Gupta; Chowdhury bt Y. Prathiba; Jitender Kumar Chaudhary lost to D. V. Prasad; Soman drew with Negi; Gurpreet lost to Holmirzaev; Nirav Rajasuba lost to Muralidharan; Mohd. Khorsheed Alam (Ban) lost to Saravanan.

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