The Hindu : Saptarishi Roy Choudary triumphs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 26, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Saptarishi Roy Choudary triumphs

By D. Ravi Shankar

BANGALORE July 25. The final round of the National Youth Chess tournament ended with some dramatic twists. As predicted by Chief Arbiter Raja Ravi Sekar, five players ended with eight points each and the winner was decided by the `cut progressive' which favoured Saptarishi Roy Choudary of the Indian Railways. Kerala's K. Ratnakaran finished runner-up and Neelotpal Das took the third spot.

Valay Parikh playing on the top board against Saptarishi Roy Choudary playing black adopted the Closed Sicilian. Many youngsters from Gujarat play this variation following their mentor Praful Mehta whose influence is evident.

In this style there are no exchanges for quite some moves and Saptarishi Roy Choudary was driven into a defensive slot with a backward `d' pawn. By the 20th move Valay Parikh held a slight positional advantage and within four moves developed a passed pawn on the 7th rank.

Valay Parikh's clear queenside majority put him in line for a technical victory and Saptarishi Roy Choudary soon stopped his clock accepting defeat.

On the third board, Ratnakaran was the closest contender for the title against Saptarishi Roy Choudary. Ratnakaran needed a win against the other Saptarishi Roy- and found himself facing the French Classical off beat line taken by the latter.

Saptarishi Roy offered the Greek Sacrifice with bishop on h7 similar to the Trojan horse offering. From here on, when the pieces where somewhat level, Ratnakaran miscalculated the 43rd move and from a winning edge slithered to a drawish position. That crucial mistake shut out Ratnakaran's chances of winning the title as the win would have put him in the lead by half a point.

On the second board, Neelotpal Das finally showed some attacking spirit and went all out for a victory after a series of draws. Neelotpal employed the Saemisch variation of the Nimzo Indian (named after the forceful German player).

Pankaj Joshi throwing caution to the winds riskily forced an attack on the kingside but Neelotpal was equal to the challenge.

Pankaj Joshi in a wild tactical complication lost a rook, bishop and knight for Neelotpal's queen and had to resign on the 21st move.

The National Youth Chess tournament saw two new players; Harshal Deshpande and Dheeraj Saxena earning Elo ratings while, players to improve their rating by 25-45 points were Akshay Raj Kore, Kruthika Nadig and Soumitra Mojumdar. Jonathan Utharid and Ishmit Singh also improved their ratings.

K. Vijaykeerthi, Kruthika Nadig, Jonathan Utharid and Akshay Raj Kore made it into the prize-money winning list.

The results (final round): Valay Parikh (8) bt Saptarishi Roy Choudary (8); Pankaj Joshi (7.5) lost to Neelotpal Das (8); Saptarishi Roy (7.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (8); J. Ramakrishna (8) bt Prathamesh Mokal (7); Saurabh Kherdekar (7.5) bt D. Prabharan (6.5); Syed Anwar Shazuli (7) drew with Akshay Raj Kore (7); Himanshu Sharma (7.5) bt Pratik Shriwas (6.5); Kruthika Nadig (6.5) lost to P. Rajesh (7.5); Jonathan Utharid (6.5) drew with Akash Thakur (6); Prasenjit Dutta (6.5) drew with Biswajit Chatterjee (6.5).

The top ten rankings after the tournament: 1. Saptarishi Roy Choudary, 2. K. Ratnakaran, 3. Neelotpal Das, 4. J. Ramakrishna, 5. Valay Parikh, 6. Pankaj Joshi, 7. Saptarishi Roy, 8. Himanshu Sharma, 9. Saurabh Kherdekar and 10. P. Rajesh.

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