The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Seeded players find the going tough

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Sunday, Sep 03, 2006

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Sport - Chess

Seeded players find the going tough

Rakesh Rao

AHMEDABAD: The going got tougher than expected for most of the leading seeds as the 44th National `B' chess championship came to life with some less-fancied players getting their share of limelight on the second day at the Karnavati Club here on Saturday.

If the surprise loss of second seeded International Master S. Satyapragyan at the hands of Aniket Pawase on Friday night served as a warning for the other seeds, the second round confirmed the fears of the elite in the field.

On a day when top seed K. Ratnakaran drew with Manish Joshi in 34 moves, Deep Sengupta, G. Rohit and R.R. Laxman seeded three, seven and 10 surrendered to Vikas Sharma, Moti Ram and the vastly experienced Virender Singh Negi of Airlines, in that order, on the leading boards.

Negi stuns Laxman

Among these, Laxman was the biggest causality. Winner of a title recently in Sri Lanka, Laxman missed an opportunity to `fork' Negi's queen in the middle-game of the 46-move encounter in Sicilian Defence.

Negi, who had won a pawn after repulsing Laxman's early aggression, claimed another one and never looked back.

The other two Chennai-based International Masters, fifth seed P. Konguvel and sixth seed G.B. Prakash, along with National women's champion Swati Ghate, IMs Roktim Bandyopadhyay, P.D.S. Girinath, T.S. Ravi and IM in-waiting Saptarshi Roy were involved in draws.

The results (second round): Manish Joshi (1.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (1.5); Vikas Sharma (2) bt Deep Sengupta (1); Poobesh Anand (2) bt Y. Dhanabir Singh (1); C.S. Unni (1.5) drew with P. Konguvel (1.5); G.B. Prakash (1.5) drew with K. Priyadharshan (1.5); Moti Ram (2) bt G. Rohit (1); Valay Parikh (2) bt S. Nitin (1); Gajendra Singh (1) lost to Lanka Ravi (2); R.R. Laxman (1) lost to V.S. Negi (2); Krishan Soni (1) lost to Himanshu Sharma (2); V. Saravanan (2) bt N. Srinath (1); Devinder Singh Suri (1.5) drew with Swati Ghate (1.5); Avi Bagdi (1.5) drew with Saptarshi Roy (1.5); Kiran Mohanty (2) bt B.T. Muralikrishnan (1); Roktim Bandyopadhyay (1.5) drew with Ganesh Batt (1.5); Sohan Phadke (1) lost to D. Harika (2); Dinesh Sharma (2) bt Vikram Saralaya (1); Swaraj Palit (1) lost to R. Balasubramanium (2); Vikramaditya Kamble (2) bt Shrenaysh Dalkia (1); Chaitanya Vaidya (1) lost to Suvrajit Saha (2); Prathamesh Mokal (2) bt Manish Parmar (1); Rajesh Diwan (1) lost to Thej Kumar (2); P.D.S. Girinath (1.5) drew with Karun Duggal (1.5); Utpal Boruah (1.5) drew with Somak Palit (1.5); Shailesh Raval (1.5) drew with T.S. Ravi (1.5); Soumya Swaminathan (1) lost to Sudhakar Babu (2); Ashwani Tiwari (1) lost to Varughese Koshy (2); Praveen Kumar (2) bt Naveen Hegde (1); Arvinderpreet Singh (1) lost to Eesha Karavade (2); Sankalp Modwal (1) lost to Atanu Lahiri (2); B. Adhiban (1) lost to Biswajeet Chatterjee (2); Dushyan Das (1.5) drew with M.B. Muralidharan (1.5); Rahul Shetty (2) bt Aditya Udeshi (1); Shashikant Kutwal (1.5) drew with Prasanna Rao (1.5); R. Muralidharan (1) lost to Soumya Ranjan Mishra (2); K. Gunasekharan (2) bt Swayams Mishra (1); Abhishek Kelkar (2) bt S. Rishipal Singh (1); K. Gopalakrishnan (1) lost to Anup Deshmukh (2); Arjun Tiwari (2) bt Vinay Raj Bhatt (1).

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