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Gopal puts it across Roktim

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Third seed G.N. Gopal of Aluva, Kerala, overcame travel related fatigue to defeat his former trainer Roktim Bandyopadyay of Kolkata in the opening round of the 45th Velammal National ‘A’ chess championship which got off to a start at the M.A.C. Stadium here on Sunday.

Having finished third at Gibraltar Open after playing at a huge rating performance of 2703, Gopal nearly missed his connecting flight to Chennai at the Dubai airport this morning when he arrived there from London.

He surprised Roktim by castling queen side and won in just 25 attacking moves from a Philidor’s defence.

Five GMs held

Overall, five grandmasters were held to draws in the opening round and an equal number won. Defending champion Surya Ganguly won two pawns on the queen side to defeat former national champion Ponnuswamy Konguvel.

Mysore post-graduate M.S. Thejkumar who is looking for a job accepted a draw offer from Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte of Pune on the 11th move in a queen’s Indian defence with the white pieces.

In another quick draw, T.S. Ravi did not push himself much despite playing white to draw seven-time national champion P.M. Thipsay.

Dibyendu Barua of Kolkata crushed Prathamesh Mokal of Pune with both players trying a variant of the Richter-Rauser attack for the first time.

Barua’s old fashioned attempt with white to break the centre made him the winner with Mokal slow in breaking on the queen side.

Delhi’s Parimarjan Negi sacrificed a rook for bishop to hunt down the king of B.S. Sivananda of Karnataka. Deepan Chakkravarthy of Madurai outplayed Suvrajit Saha of Kolkata despite playing with black.

Strong field

“I would like to compare this event with the old Soviet Championship finals,” said GM Elizbar Ubilava of Georgia. Indians have the same preparing and working attitude as the Russians and what they seem to lack at times is ‘technique’ pointed out Ubilava who is trainer for Negi here.

“Many Indians, especially the younger ones are much underrated and in fact the event is much stronger,” observed GM Alon Greenfeld who is also one of the trainers here.

“Vidit is much mature for his age and has the same weaknesses many younger players including Garry Kasparov had at that age,” said Greenfeld.

Twelve rounds remain to be played. Entry is free for spectators and it is from the Wallajah Road side entrance.

The results (round one):

S.S. Ganguly bt P. Konguvel, M.S. Thejkumar drew with A. Kunte, G.N. Gopal bt R. Bandyopadyay, B.S. Sivananda lost to P. Negi, D. Barua bt P.S. Mokal, S. Saha lost to J. Deepan Chakkravarthy, N. Das drew with N. Sanjay, N.K. Mishra drew with Ashwin Jayaram, R.B. Ramesh drew with Vishnu Prasanna, T.S. Ravi drew with P.M. Thipsay, T. Bakre drew with Sudhakar Babu, R. Ashwath lost to Sriram Jha, M.R. Venkatesh bt P. Karthikeyan, R. Shetty bt S. Kidambi, K. Rathnakaran bt V. Gujrathi, S. Kutwal lost to S.P. Sethuraman, Arun Prasad bt Preetham Sharma, Arun Karthik lost to S.R. Chowdhury, N. Mohota drew with A. Khamparia, Lalith Babu lost to S. Satyapragyan, Saptarshi Roy bt L. Imocha, Chinna Reddy lost to B. Adhiban.

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