Surender Sharma upstages Vijayalakshmi

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 2. This edition of the National `B' chess championship is fast turning out to be an arena for the lesser lights to outshine some of the accomplished stars. If Sunday belonged to Deep Sengupta, Monday saw Surender Sharma and Shashikant Kutwal dazzle at the Raisoni Engineering College hall here.

Before third seed Sandeepan Chanda notched up his fourth straight authoritative triumph and led a pack-of-six at the top, Surender made Woman Grandmaster and fifth seed S. Vijayalakshmi resign in just 21 moves. Later, Kutwal completed a clinical victory over seventh seed S. Kidambi to join the leaders.

Besides Chanda and Kutwal, those who continued their winning sequence were, Sriram Jha, B.T. Murali Krishnan, P. Magesh Chandran and C.S. Gokhale.

Among the women, Swati Ghate managed a creditable draw with fellow overnight leader Varugeese Koshy before her friend Nisha Mohota did likewise against V. Saravanan. Unlike these two WIMs, S. Meenakshi lost to Jayant Gokhale.

But the biggest surprise of the day was the defeat of Meenakshi's sister, Vijayalakshmi. Surender Sharma, the three- time Delhi champion, did not have to try too hard in this miniature game. Vijayalakshmi, who had lost the second round, too, overlooked the loss of a knight in a simple three-move combination which involved the exchange of queens. By this time, Vijayalakshmi's king had marched to the centre of the board and was in danger of being checkmated. Vijayalakshmi wisely gave up.

It may be recalled that the 42-year-old Surender Sharma, a Cabin Assistant with Air India, had checkmated R.B. Ramesh in the previous edition of the championship at Jamshedpur. Today's defeat was also a crushing blow to Vijayalakshmi's dreams of becoming the first woman to qualify for the men's National `A' championship.

Much later, it was Kutwal who made the most of Kidambi's ambitious ways. In the open variation of Ruy Lopez, Kidambi, with black pieces, was never comfortable but hoped for the best. His aggressive plan backfired as Kutwal, ranked 42nd in the field, slowly tightened his grip and made the International Master resign.

T.S. Ravi, seeded 11, almost met the same fate as Vijayalakshmi and Kidambi, but survived after G.B. Joshi faltered in time- pressure. The match ended in a draw.

Meanwhile, Swati is slowly emerging as the one to watch out for. Playing black for the third time in four matches, Swati broke her three-match losing sequence to Koshy with a listless draw. In this match, Koshy somehow did not take much initiative. Before long, the position stood simplified by a series of exchanges and draw looked the only fair result.

But this was not the case in the Saravanan-Nisha battle. Saravanan, seeded four, looked better placed in the late middle- game but Nisha played the rook and minor-piece ending accurately to share the honours.

After enjoying a sensational Sunday, the 12-year-old Deep Sengupta posted another impressive result by holding higher rated M.R. Venkatesh. Around the same time, top seed R.B. Ramesh and Anup Deshmukh, the duo which fell to Sengupta on Sunday, posted comfortable victories.

lThe results: Fourth round: Pankaj Joshi (3) lost to Sandeepan Chanda (4); Sriram Jha (4) bt Gurpreet Pal Singh (3); Varugeese Koshy (3.5) drew with Swati Ghate (3.5); B.T. Murali Krishnan (4) bt S.K. Rathod (3); P. Magesh Chandran (4) bt Vikramaditya Kamble (3); Deep Sengupta (3.5) drew with M.R. Venkatesh (3.5); C.S. Gokhale (4) bt J. Ramkrishna (3); Shashikant Kutwal (4) bt S. Kidambi (3); G.B. Prakash (3.5) bt C. Natrajan (2.5); V. Saravanan (3) drew with Nisha Mohota (3); G.B. Joshi (3) drew with T.S. Ravi (3); Dinesh Sharma (3.5) bt Argydip Das (2.5); Saurabh Kherdekar (2.5) lost to Lanka Ravi (3.5); R. Bala Subramanium (2.5) lost to N. Sudhakar Babu (3.5); Preetham R. Sharma (3) drew with Vishal Sareen (3); Suvrajit Saha (3.5) bt Manthan Chokshi (2.5); S. Meenakshi (2.5) lost to Jayant Gokhale (3.5); Santosh Kumar Sinha (2.5) lost to Rahul Shetty (3.5); Prathamesh Mokal (3) drew with Saptarshi Roy (3); K. Ratnakaran (3) drew with Vedant Goswami (3); Pramod Kumar Singh (2.5) lost to Ravi Kumar (3.5); D. Ravi Shankar (3) drew with Roktim Bandopadhyaya (3); Surender Sharma (3) bt S. Vijayalakshmi (2); Neelotpal Das (3) bt P. Rajesh (2); Atanu Lahiri (2.5) drew with B.V. Prakash (2.5); Dilip Pagey (2) lost to S. Satyapragyan (2); Nassir Wajih (2.5) drew with Laxmana D. Rao (2.5); Rashmin Pulekar (2) lost to N. Sanjay (3); Sudhir Kumar Sinha (2) lost to Anup Deshmukh (3); Sekhar Sahu (3) bt Y. Kalyan Kumar (2); Nassir Ali (2.5) drew with Satchidanand Soman (2.5); Shankar Roy (3) bt Vikas Sharma (2); Sharad Tilak (2) lost to Dilip Das (3); T.V. Karthikeyan (2.5) drew with Pranjal Das (2.5); Deepan Chakraborty (2) bt Adway Choudhari (2); Saimeera Ravi (2.5) drew with R.S. Gupta (2.5); Ashwani Tiwari (3) bt Ravi Khanna (2); M. Srinivasa Rao (2.5) drew with Anupama Gokhale (2.5); Arjun Tiwari (2.5) drew with V. Hariharan (2.5); R. Upadhyaya (3) bt Ketan Boricha (2); B.S. Shivananda (2) lost to G. Rohit (3); G. Balaji (3) bt Amardeep Bartakke (2); Yashraj Aidasani (2) lost to Prasenjit Dutta (3); Somak Palit (2) lost to Manish Joshi (3); Manoj Mishra (3) bt Vinoth Kumar (2); Prasanna Iyer (2) lost to D.P. Singh (3); K. Vedadri (2.5) drew with Ebenezer Joseph (2.5); N. Neelakanthan (3) bt Krishan Soni (2); R.C. Gupta (3) bt Niran Rajasuba (2); Abhishek Das (2) lost to Kiran Panditrao (3); K. Gopalkrishnan (3) bt A.K. Varma (2); Harkamal Singh (2) lost to Himanshu Sharma (3); R.M. Dongre (3) bt N. Vinuthna (2); Abhijit Chutia (2) lost to Pradip Ghosh (3); Rahul Sangma (2) lost to Ramakrishna Kashelkar (3).

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