The Hindu : Sport : Kotsur and Deepan share the lead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 04, 2006

Sport

Sport

Kotsur and Deepan share the lead

Sports Reporter

Deepan Chakravarthy — Photo: K. Gajendran

HYDERABAD: GM Pavel Kotsur of Kazakhstan joined India's J. Deepan Chakravarthy in the lead (Seven points each) at the end of eighth round of the ONGC Cup international Grandmasters open chess tournament here on Friday.

On top board, IM Deepan settled for a draw against IM Reefat Bin Sattar of Bangladesh in French Defence. Despite the Indian gaining slight advantage in the middle-game by virtue of better pawn structure with a protective passed pawn on d6, there was little counter-play. This was the phase when Reefat tried to create complications by sacrificing a knight for one pawn. Unwittlingly, Deepan accepted it, which saw the opponent gain three passed pawns on queenside and after that it was theoretical draw.

On the second board, Kotsur showed his class in outplaying Ponnuswamy Konguvel in English Opening. When the position was equal, Konguvel misjudged a capture on e6, which saw him pawn up but exposed lot of weaknesses in the pawn structure. Seizing on this unexpected opportunity presented to him, Kostur attacked relentlessly with his double bishops in the end game to wrap up a win.

Back in the reckoning

The highlight of the day was the way veteran GM Pravin Thipsay bounced back into reckoning with an impressive win against IM Atanu Lahiri in Austrian attack in Pric Defence. In a near-equal position, Atanu wasted a couple of moves with his queen to slip into time trouble and later faltered by playing away a defensive piece from the kingside which was duly capitalised by a wonderful queenside attack by Thipsay who made no mistake in clinching the issue to join five others — S. Arun Prasad, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Enamul Hossain, Alexander Fominyh and Reefat Bin Sattar — in the second spot with 6.5 points each.

IM Enamul Hossain of Bangladesh held GM Alexander Fominyh to a draw in Sicilian Paulson Variation. The young M.R. Lalit Babu continued his impressive showing outwitting triple-GM norm holder G.B. Prakash in Queen's Indian Defence.

Important results (8th round): Deepan Chakravarthy (7) drew with Reefat Bin Sattar (6.5); Pavel Kotsur (7) bt P.Konguvely (6); Enamul Hossain (6.5) drew with Alexander Fominyh (6.5); Deep Sengupta (5.5) lost to S.S. Ganguly (6.5): S. Kidambi (6) drew with K. Ratnakaran (6): Pravin Thipsay (6.5) bt Atanu Lahiri (5.5); Niaz Morshed (6) drew with S. Satyapragyan (6); S. Arun Prasad (6.5) bt D.V. Prasad (5.5): Shashikant Kutwal (5) lost to Zia-ur-Rehman (6); Somak Palit (5.5) drew with Abhijit Kunte (5.5); J. Ramakrishna (5.5) drew with Susanto Megaranto (5.5); Y. Sandeep (5) lost to R.B. Ramesh (6); V.Somesh (5) lost to Dibyendu Barua (6); Abdullah Al Rakib (6) bt B.T. Muralikrishnan (5); G.B. Prakash (5) lost to M.R. Lalit Babu (6); Himanshu Sharma (6) bt G.B. Joshi (5); D.P. Singh (6) bt S.C. Sahu (5): M.S. Thej Kumar (5) lost to K. Ramu (6); Dronavalli Harika (5.5) drew with Swathi Ghate (5.5); M. Srinivasa Rao (5) drew with Neelotpal Das (5); Vikas Sharma (4.5) lost to S. Vijayalakshmi (5.5); Sriram Jha (5.5) bt Aarthie Ramaswamy (4.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5) drew with C. Praveen Kumar (5); Zhumabaev Rinat (5.5) bt Vinoth Kumar (4.5); K.N. Gopal (4.5) lost to Roktim Bandyopadhyaya (5.5); Soumitra Majumdar (4.5) lost to Chandrasekhar Gokhale (5.5): Vishal Sareen (4.5) lost to J. Malleswara Rao (5.5); Vedant Goswami (5) drew with P.D.S. Girinath (5); P. Lakshmi Sahiti (5) drew with S. Meenakshi (5); Rajib Dhar (4) lost to Saptarshi Roy (5); S. Rishipal Singh (5) bt C. Nikhil Joshi (4).

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