The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Shyam Nikhil outwits Parimarjan Negi on a day of the teen brigade

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 20, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Chess

Shyam Nikhil outwits Parimarjan Negi on a day of the teen brigade

Rakesh Rao

ZAMBAULIM (Goa): Young turks produced some exhilarating display of attacking chess on the leading boards and formed the pack of front-runners after the seventh round of the Monginis 46th National ‘B’ chess championship here on Friday.

The day clearly belonged to 16-year-old P. Shyam Nikhil. A day after miraculously escaping to victory against defending champion Prathamesh Mokal, the Chennai school boy pulled the carpet from under the feet of top seed Parimarjan Negi to take the lead and then maintained it for another round following a 59-move triumph over young IMDeep Sengupta.

With six rounds remaining, Shyam leads with seven points, one clear of Negi, Akshayraj Kore, M. R. Lalith Babu, G. Rohit, B. Adhiban and Sriram Jha.

Interestingly, the top six players are in the under-20 age category. Negi bounced back to defeat veteran B. S. Shivananda, while Kore and Babu drew in 59 moves. Rohit and Adhiban posted expected victories.

Earlier in the day, Negi, playing black, walked into Shyam’s preparation in Sicilian Najdorf and became “a bit ambitious” after deviating from the suggested continuation on the 17th move.

Shyam was quick to sense his chances and kept up the pressure on the queenside.

On the 32nd move, Negi played a dubious bishop move after which there was no stopping Shyam who eventually scored the biggest victory of his career in 41 moves.

Fourteen-year-old Padmini Rout drew with experienced International Masters S. Satyapragyan and P. D. S. Girinath on what turned out to be a day of the teen brigade.

The results:

Seventh round: Deep Sengupta (5.5) lost to P. Shyam Nikhil (7); Akshayraj Kore (6) drew with M. R. Lalith Babu (6); Parimarjan Negi (6) bt B. S. Shivananda (5); M. R. Venkatesh (5.5) drew with Ram S. Krishnan (5.5).

Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (5) lost to G. Rohit (6); M. Shyam Sundar (5.5) drew with Pravin Thipsay (5.5); Sriram Jha (6) bt Anup Deshmukh (5); B. Adhiban (6) bt R. A. Pradeep Kumar (5); G. B. Prakash (5.5) drew with E. P. Nirmal (5.5).

Arjun Tiwari (4.5) lost to R. R. Laxman (5.5); Rahul Shetty (5) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy (5); G. A. Stany (4.5) lost to Neelotpal Das (5.5); M. S. Thejkumar (5.5) bt Prasenjit Datta (4.5); R. Arun Karthik (5.5) bt Aswin Jayaram (4.5); P. D. S. Girinath (5) drew with Padmini Rout (5); S. Mari Arul (4.5) lost to P. Konguvel (5.5).

S. Satyapragyan (5) drew with Joydeep Dutta (5); Sekhar Sahu (4.5) lost to B. T. Murali Krishnan (5.5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (5) drew with M. B. Muralidharan (5); Mehar Chinna Reddy (5) drew with P. Karthikeyan (5).

Sixth round: Shyam bt Negi; Rahul Sangma lost to Deep; Thipsay drew with Shivananda; Karthikeyan lost to Lalith; Tiwari lost to Kore; Deshmukh drew with Prakash; Prasenjit lost to Venkatesh; Rohit bt D. P. Singh; Akash Thakur lost to Jha; Abhishek Das lost to Adhiban.

Padmini drew with Satyapragyan; Murali Krishnan drew with Mari Arul; Pradeep bt Saptarshi Roy; Swapnil Dhopade drew with Prasanna Rao; Vikramaditya Kamble drew with Reddy; Muralidharan drew with Suvrajit Saha; Vikramjit Singh drew with Prathamesh Mokal; Vidit Gujarati drew with Sagar Shah; Nirmal bt Vishnu Prasanna; Sudhakar Babu drew with Chinmay Kulkarni.

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

Sport