The Hindu : Sport : Mary Ann Gomes surprises Atousa Pourkashiyan

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Monday, Dec 17, 2007
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Mary Ann Gomes surprises Atousa Pourkashiyan

Rakesh Rao

MUMBAI: With some timely pre-match help from practice-partner Deep Sengupta, defending champion Mary Ann Gomes planned a ‘surprise’ and eventually shocked top seed Atousa Pourkashiyan during an eventful fourth-round action of the Asian junior chess championship here on Sunday.

Atousa, the top seed from Iran, failed to solve the opening puzzle in the rarely-played Kings’ Gambit and lost in 43 moves. Atousa took far too much time in search of an escape route and at one point, had consumed one hour more of thinking time than Mary. The victory saw Mary raise her tally to four points and maintain the overnight half-point lead.

She now plays 13-year-old Padmini Rout, who scored over an in-form Kruttika Nadig. The 48-move victory, Padmini’s third in five meetings against Kruttika, came after the former claimed a pawn in the 33rd move and added another on the way.

Deep, at whose behest Mary chose the opening line that surprised Atousa, did likewise against his unheralded rival Snehal Bhosale. He chose the English Opening and coasted home without much resistance from Bhosale who looked out of sorts from the start.

Vishnu does well

On the top board, National junior runner-up Vishnu Prasanna ended the winning streak of T. Purushothaman to emerge as the leader. In Sicilian Najdorf, Vishnu offered a rook for knight which Purushothaman accepted. Vishnu managed to put pressure through an advanced queenside pawn. A hapless Purushothaman returned the rook for a bishop but could not escape defeat in 58 moves.

For the second straight day, fifth-seeded International Master S.P. Sethuraman ended up on the losing side.

On this day, it was the former World under-10 champion Sahaj Grover who played a brilliant tactical game to outwit the talent from Chennai.

In Ruy Lopez, Sethuraman chose for a plan where he erred badly. Sahaj sacrificed a rook for a knight and forced Sethuraman to resign following a neat combination, where he temporarily gave the queen.

Meanwhile, little-known Sagar Shah held third-seeded IM Sayed-Alavi from Iran to strengthen India’s chances of a medal sweep.

The results (Indians unless stated): Fourth round: Open: Vishnu Prasanna (4) bt T. Purushothaman (3); Snehal Bhosle (3) lost to Deep Sengupta (3.5); B. Adhiban (3.5 ) bt M. Shyam Sundar (2.5); M.R. Lalith Babu (3) drew with P. Karthikeyan (3); S. Nitin (2.5) lost to Parimarjan Negi (3); Aswin Jayaram (3) bt Swapnil Dhopade (2); Sagar Shah (2.5) drew with Sayed Alavi (Iri) (2.5).

Rakesh Kulkarni (2) lost to Aditya Udeshi (3); Meghan Gupte (3) bt Debashis Das (2); Saravana Krishnan (2) lost to Aniruddha Deshpande (3); Akshat Khamparia ( 2.5) bt Y.D.B. Madugalle (Sri) (2); N. Surendran (2) drew with K. Priyadarshan (2); Shreyans K. Shah (2) drew with Bitan Banerjee (2); Swayams Mishra (2) bt Aziz Sharify (Afg, 1.5); Atishey Ajmera (1) lost to Abhishek Das (2).

Vishwesh Kochrekar (1) lost to Abhishek Kelkar (2); Nikhil Kamat (2) bt Aditya Nargundkar (1); Shiven Khosla (2) bt Samayak Baid (1); Madhankrishna Khayasth (Nep) (1) lost to G. Santhosh Kumar (2).

Girls: Mary Ann Gomes (4) bt Atousa Pourkashiyan (Iri) (2.5); Padmini Rout (2.5) bt Kruttika Nadig (2.5); S. Harini (2.5) drew with Soumya Swaminathan ( 2.5); Kiran Manisha Mohanty (2.5) bt Liza Shamina Akter (Ban) (2); Pon N Krithika (2.5) bt Tara Rahimi (1.5).

P. Priya (2.5) bt Mitali Patil (1.5); P. Uthra (2) bt J. Mohana Priya (1); Y. G. Sriharika (0.5) lost to P. Sivasankari (2); Bhakti Juikar ( 0.5) drew with Sonakshi Rathore (0.5).

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