The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Favourites begin well

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Wednesday, Aug 01, 2007
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Sport - Chess

Favourites begin well

Arvind Aaron

CHENNAI: All the favourites, including the 22-year old Sri Lankan National champion M.K.A. Russell, recorded easy opening round victories in the 7th Adyar Times FIDE Rated Tournament that commenced here on Tuesday.

While Russell overcame fellow Sri Lankan R.H.L. De Zoysa with white, top seed Ram S. Krishnan of BSNL, Chennai won a breezy 19-move game against M. Arun.

Second seed GM-Elect G.B .Prakash won in 30 moves with black against Ashok Kumar while his Indian Bank team mate and third seed Sudhakar Babu checkmated S. Aswin in 54 moves with white.

Hariharan held

Former National ‘A’ player V. Hariharan of Chennai was held to a 37-move draw by unrated 79-year old veteran J.P. Dinakaran of Coonoor.

A record 227 players are competing in this 10-round competition. The Tamil Nadu State Chess Association rejected nine entries from Bengal and Andhra as they came too late. Of the contestants, 99 of them already have FIDE rating and the remaining ones are hoping to find a place in the October 2007 rating list.

For the first time in seven years, the organisers have used Swiss Manager, a sophisticated computer pairing programme which allows for online updates to a well known chess results server located in Austria.

Important results (round one): Ram S Krishnan bt M. Arun, Ashok Kumar lost to G.B. Prakash, N. Sudhakar Babu bt S. Aswin, S. Badrinath lost to R. Balasubramanium, R.R. Laxman bt L. Barth, D. Bharathi lost to Syed Anwar Shazuli, C.J. Ar vind bt V. Bhaskar, K. Boobalan lost to C. Praveen Kumar, M. Shyam Sundar bt S. Boopeash, O.C. De Silva lost to O.T. Anil Kumar,M.K.A. Russell bt R.H.L. De Zoysa, J.P.Dinakaran drew V. Hariharan, K.V.Shantharam bt B.V. Dinesh, R.S. Eithiresh lost to Vinoth Kumar.