The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Praveen, six others hold GMs

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Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007
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Praveen, six others hold GMs

Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI: Even as the participation of 90-year-old Bhausaheb Padsalgikar became the talking point of the opening day of Commonwealth chess championship here, some of the youngsters produced the best results of the their promising careers at the Siri Fort Sports Complex here on Monday.

Bhausaheb, armed with a magnifying glass, battled gallantly for 43 moves and eventually surrendered to the last year’s world under-10 champion Girish Koushik but the more than the outcome, this “battle of generations” truly reflected the passion for the game between two players separated by 80 years!

Though the young Koushik may not have realized that he was up against a legend, who has helped produce hundreds of chess players from Sangli in Maharashtra, there were other young players who knew exactly what they had achieved against Grandmasters.

Praveen Kumar, the 21-year-old from Chennai, pulled off the biggest surprise of the day when he held second seeded British Grandmaster Gawain Jones in 28 moves before Vinay Kumar Matta made third seed Abhijit Kunte agree to a similar result.

Praveen, who stunned K. Humpy here a couple of years ago, made light a rating difference of 288 points and drew following perpetual checks.

In the opening round, local coach D. S. Negi latched on to an early tactical miss from Grandmaster Neelotpal Das proved equal in just 20 moves in the biggest surprise of the morning.

In the second round, Negi stunned IM Deep Sengupta to be among the leaders.

Though Negi’s student eight-year-old Harshal Shahi tossed away the advantage of an extra pawn against Woman International Master Kruttika Nadig, two other Delhi youngsters stunned International Masters, both former members of the Indian Olympiad teams.

Vaibhav Suri defeated Diwakar Prasad Singh, who was part of the Indian team in the Turin Olympiad last year.

The results (Indians unless stated): Second round: Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2) bt Nassir Wajih (1); C. Praveen Kumar (1.5) drew with Gawain Jones (Eng) (1.5); Abhijit Kunte (1.5) drew with Vinay Kumar Matta (1.5); Laisram Imocha (1) lost to Parimarjan Negi (2); Abdullah Al-Rakib (Ban) (2) bt Mary Ann Gomes (1); Dibyendu Barua (1.5) drew with Swapnil Dhopade (1.5); D. Harika (2) bt R Premnath (1); R. B. Ramesh (2) bt P. Phoobalan (1); Abhijeet Gupta (2) bt G. B. Joshi (1); Tejas Bakre (2) bt Soumya Swaminathan (1).

First round: Girish Koushik lost to Ganguly; Jones bt Vivek Bharti; Himal Gusain lost to Kunte; Negi bt Shardul Gagare; Abhilash Reddy lost to Abdullah Rakib (Ban); Deepan bt Atul Dahale; Lim Kian Hwa (Mal) lost to Barua; G. Rohit drew with Richa Pujari; D. S. Negi drew with Neelotpal Das; Reefat bt P. Uthra; Ch. Divyasri lost to Harika; Aswin bt Jeslin Tai Li-Jin (Sin); R. Dissanayake (Sri) lost to Ramesh; Thipsay bt Anand Reddy; Melissa Greef (RSA) lost to Abhijeet Gupta.

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