The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Lanka Ravi in lead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 08, 2006

Sport

Sport - Chess

Lanka Ravi in lead

Rakesh Rao

AHMEDABAD: The safety-first approach on the majority of the leading boards continued to throw up a series of drawn verdicts.

In the midst of those looking for a risk-free passage, Lanka Ravi flirted with danger on way to overpowering local favourite Valay Parikh and took a friendly draw from Himanshu Sharma to be the sole leader with 8.5 points from 10 rounds of the National `B' chess championship here on Thursday.

Himanshu, who scalped the other overnight leader Suvrajit Saha in the morning, was temporarily in second place during the ongoing 10th round. Saha, who blundered a pawn early in the game against Himanshu, drew in just 11 moves with top seed K. Ratnakaran to reach 7.5 points.

Vikramaditya Kamble, D. Harika and Somak Palit drew both their rounds in quick time to stay in contention for the 30 qualifying spots for the next National `A' championship.

If nine of the top-14 boards ended with honours even in the ninth round, five out the top-10 boards, finished within 30 minutes of the 10th round.

Earlier, the start of the ninth round was delayed by an hour due to water logging in the playing hall following incessant rain.

The results:

Round 10: Himanshu Sharma (8) drew with Lanka Ravi (8.5); Suvrajit Saha (7.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (7); Vikramaditya Kamble (7.5) drew with Poobesh Anand (7.5); D. Harika (7.5) drew with Somak Palit (7.5); G. Rohit (7) drew with Eesha Karavade (7); P.D.S. Girinath (7) drew with Gurpreetpal Singh (7).

Round 9: Lanka Ravi bt Valay Parikh (6.5); Himanshu bt Saha; Prathamesh Mokal (7) drew with Harika; Palit drew with Kamble; Ratnakaran bt B. Adhiban (6); Atanu Lahiri (6.5) drew with S. Satyapragyan (6.5); Eesha drew with Deep Sengupta (6.5); Poobesh bt P. Shyam Nikhil (6); Nassir Wajih (6) lost to R.R. Laxman (7); Saptarshi Roy (6.5) drew with Gurpreetpal; Roktim Bandyopadhyay (6.5) drew with Sudhir Sinha (6.5); Thej Kumar (6.5) drew with Ashwin Jayaram (6.5); M. Vinoth Kumar (6.5) drew with Girinath; Laltu Chatterji (6) drew with P. Konguvel (6); R. Ashwath (5.5) lost to G. Rohit (6.5); V. Saravanan (5.5) lost to Abhishek Das (6.5); Swati Ghate (6.5) bt M. Shrinivasa Rao (5.5); R. Balasubramanium (6.5) bt Vivek Shukla (5.5); Sudhakar Babu (6) drew with Akshat Khamparia (6); Varugeese Koshy (5.5) lost to M. Vinay Kumar (6.5); Manthan Chokshi (5.5) lost to C. Praveen Kumar (6.5); T. Purushothaman (6) drew with M.B. Muralidharan (6); Sohan Phadke (6) drew with K. Gunasekaran (6); Swapnil Dhopade (6.5) bt Arjun Tiwari (5.5); S. Mari Arul (6.5) bt Puneet Jaiswal (5.5); G.B. Prakash (6) bt Nirav Rajasuba (5.5); Arghyadip Das (6) bt V. Hariharan (5); R. Arun Karthik (5.5) drew with C.S. Gokhale (5.5); B.T. Murali Krishnan (6) bt Saheli Nath (5); Vikas Sharma (6) bt Dinesh Sharma (5); Gajendra Singh (5) lost to T.S. Ravi (6); N. Sanjay (5.5) drew with Manish Joshi (5.5); Rahul Shetty (5.5) drew with V.S. Negi (5.5); M.R. Lalith Babu (5) lost to N. Srinath (6).

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

Sport