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Tuesday, Sep 16, 2008
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Tough opener for fancied players

Rakesh Rao

ZAMBAULIM (Goa): Some unexpectedly well-fought encounters on the leading boards was the feature of the opening round of the Monginis 46th National ‘B’ chess championship at the peaceful precinct of the Damodar Devasthan here on Monday.

With over 300 rated players, the largest in any internationally rated event ever held in the country, the competition was expected to be moderately testing for the creamy layer of the field. But surprising was the high degree of resistance faced by the Grandmasters and some International Masters from little known players in the very first round.

Shiva’s day out

Seasoned Railways’ campaigner B. T. Muralikrishna was the first IM to lose after facing Tamil Nadu’s R. K. Shiva Murugan. Fellow IMs Anup Deshmukh and C. S. Gokhale were held by Rajasthan’s Rahul Karnani and Andhra’s Sahajasri Cholleti.

The two Woman Grandmasters in the fray — S. Meenakshi and Aarthie Ramaswamy — drew in contrasting ways against far lesser-rated rivals like Jammu and Kashmir’s Ritwan Sauntra and Andhra’s Mohammad Aminismail Khadri.

Earlier, by the end of the third hour, only three IMs — M. R. Venkatesh, Deep Sengupta and Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury — could win. Among the four Grandmasters, Neelotpal Das was the first to win, and that too in the fourth hour.

Negi posts win

Top seed Parimarjan Negi scored a patient 46-move victory over a passive Andhra youngster Venkata Krishna Karthik. To win, seven-time National champion Pravin Thipsay took 40 moves, eight less than what Deepan Chakkravarthy needed.

The results (first round):

Parimarjan Negi bt Venkata Krishna Karthik; Ajit Kumar Verma gave a walkover to R. R. Laxman; Deepan Chakkravarthy bt Roop Saurav; Shrenhik Daklia lost to Neelotpal Das; M. R. Venkatesh bt Vikrant Kakkad; Madhab Sarma lost to G. Rohit.

Deep Sengupta bt O. P. Yadav; D. K. Chopra lost to Pravin Thipsay; M. S. Thej Kumar bt Gillford Thangkhiew; Devesh Mukherjee lost to Aswin Jayaram; Sriram Jha bt Pratik Patil; Karma Pandya lost to S. P. Sethuraman; Subba Raju lost to Himanshu Sharma.

B. Adhiban bt M. Raju; Sumit Grover lost to P. Konguvel; S. Satyapragyan bt Arpit Saxena; Shiva Murugan bt B. T. Murali Krishnan; Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury bt Vasanth Vishnu Naik; Atembi Laishram lost to V. Saravanan; Saptarshi Roy bt Dev Krishan; T. S. Sathish Kumar lost to P. Karthikeyan; Akshayraj Kore bt Rajiv Vasudev; Smeeru Thakur lost to Swapnil Dhopade.

G. B. Prakash bt Sukhavi Achumi; Suvrajit Saha bt Shyam Kishore Prasad; Niraj Saripalli lost to P. Shyam Nikhil; Prathamesh Mokal bt Narender Singh; Shyam Shetye lost to Vidit Gujarati; N. Sanjay gave a walkover to Ram Gupta; Chiraranjan Bhuyan lost to Dinesh Sharma; Vishnu Prasanna bt Kalpesh Acharya.

Atishay Ajmera lost to Shashikant Kutwal; Rahul Sangma bt Satyabrata Handique; Govardhan Behera lost to Atanu Lahiri; S. Meenakshi drew with Ritwan Sauntra; Shantanu Bhambure gave a walkover to N. Sudhakar Babu; M. R. Lalith Babu bt Sree Lakshmi; Akash Iyer lost to B. S. Shivananda.

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