The Hindu : Sport : Underdogs call the shots in round two

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 17, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport

Underdogs call the shots in round two

Rakesh Rao

Two-time champion Sriram goes down to Rupankar

ZAMBAULIM (Goa): Underdogs had their day by adding the names of third-seeded Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy along with International Masters M.R. Venkatesh, Aswin Jayaram, Sriram Jha, S.P. Sethuraman and Saptarshi Roy to the casualty list in the second round of the Monginis 46th National ‘B’ chess championship at the Damodar Devasthan hall here.

On Tuesday, a big bunch of unheralded players outwitted, or proved equal to, fancied rivals rated over 250 to 300 points above and reinforced the belief that their actual playing strength was more than the one reflected in their rating.

The pick of this lot was the recently-crowned Maharashtra champion Aniruddha Deshpande. A 19-year old final year commerce student from Pune, Aniruddha got his calculations right against Deepan and won in 42 moves of Sicilian Najdorf.

Deepan loses

Rated 2148 as against Deepan’s 2462, Aniruddha seized the initiative after his rival overlooked a threat. Sensing victory, the debutant held his nerves and continued accurately to thwart the Madurai-based Grandmaster’s bid to survive.

Fifth seed Venkatesh battled for 156 moves against Madhya Pradesh’s Manish Sharma before surrendering. Aswin went down to Sayantan Das after the Bengal player’s extra pawn made the decisive difference.

Sriram, a two-time champion, found himself at the receiving end against Bengal’s Rupankar Nath in 35 moves. In Grunfeld Defence, Rupankar won two pawns and threatened to win another when Sriram chose to give up.

Sethuraman, the talented youngster who recently won the second-board gold medal and inspired India to victory in the World Youth Olympiad last month, fell to Assam’s Rajib Dhar. Sethuraman sacrificed a pawn for initiative but the ploy back-fired. Rajib slowly tightened the grip to win in 51 moves. Saptarshi Roy, another young IM, gave up after a prolonged battle with Punjab’s Arvinderpreet Singh.

The results: Second round: N. Surendran (1) lost to Parimarjan Negi (2); R.R. Laxman (2) bt Vikas Nigam (1); Aniruddha Deshpande (2) bt Deepan Chakkravarthy (1); Neelotpal Das (2) bt Utpal Baruah (1); Manish Joshi (2) bt M.R. Venkatesh (1); G. Rohit (2) bt G.V. Sai Krishna (1); Brajesh Agarwal (1) lost to Deep Sengupta (2); Pravin Thipsay (2) bt Pranav Shetty (1); G.C. Mohapatra (1) lost to M. S. Thej Kumar (2); Aswin Jayaram (1) lost to Sayantan Das (2); Rupankar Nath (2) bt Sriram Jha (1); S.P. Sethuraman (1) lost to Rajib Dhar (2); Deepak Katiyar (1.5) drew with P.D.S. Girinath (1.5); Himanshu Sharma (1.5) drew with Fenil Shah (1.5); Shailesh Rawal (1.5) drew with B. Adhiban (1.5); P. Konguvel (2) bt Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (1); Bidyut Bikash Handique (1) lost to S. Satyapragyan (2); Hemant Sharma (1) lost to Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (2); V. Saravanan (1.5) drew with Abhishek Kelkar (1.5).

Arvinder Preet Singh (2) bt Saptarshi Roy (1); P. Karthikeyan (2) bt V.S. Negi (1); Rajendra Teli (1) lost to Akshayraj Kore (2); Swapnil Dhopade (2) bt Santanu Borpatra (1); M. G. Gahan (1.5) drew with G.B. Prakash (1.5); Vikramaditya Kamble (1.5) drew with Mohammad Irshad (1.5); Anurag Mhamal (1) lost to Suvrajit Saha (2); Shyam Nikhil (2) bt Prince Bajaj (1); Venkat Sundaram (1) lost to Prathamesh Mokal (2); Vidit Gujarati (2) bt Himal Gusain (1); Dinesh Sharma (2) bt P. Jayakumar (1).

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

Sport