Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) men retained the title while Air India emerged champion in the women’s section of the National team chess championship on Tuesday.
In the final round, PSPB, coached by D.V. Prasad and with all the Grandmasters — Abhijeet Gupta, B. Adhiban, S.P. Sethuraman and M.R. Lalith Babu — in action, made short work of Air India to record a 3.5-0-5 victory to keep its slate clean, winning all the nine matches. PSPB finished with 18 points.
Indian Railways ‘B’ and ‘A’ teams took the second and third place respectively.
ADVERTISEMENT
In the women’s section, favourite Air India, comprising WGMs S. Vijayalakshmi, S. Meenakshi, Tania Sachdev and Bhakti Kulkarni, ensured that there were no dramatic twists in the final round when it scored an easy 3.5-0.5 win over a relatively inexperienced Tamil Nadu to finish with 14 points. For the latter, the only consolation was when Vaishali held Bhakti to a draw.
On the second table, defending champion Airports Authority of India posted a convincing 4-0 win over a young AP side to finish second.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Men: PSPB bt Air India 3.5-0.5 (Abhijeet Gupta bt S. Satyapragyan; B. Adhiban drew with Chandrasekhar Gokhale; S.P. Sethuraman bt Rahul Shetty; M.R. Lalith Babu bt G.B. Joshi).
LIC drew with Indian Railways ‘A’ 2-2 (Anup Deshmukh drew with Swapnil S. Djopade; Sriram Jha drew with Arghyadip Das; Atanu Lahiri drew with R.R. Laxman; K. Dinesh Sharma drew with Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury).
Tamil Nadu ‘A’ lost to Indian Railways ‘B’ 0.5-3.5 (T.U. Navin Kanna drew with M.S. Thej Kumar; N.R. Vignesh lost to Himanshu Sharma; B. Kumaran lost to Akshat Kamparia; N.R. Vikash lost to Saptarshi Roy).
Tamil Nadu ‘C’ lost to Airports Authority of India 1.5-2.5 (V.R. Aravind Chidambaram drew with V. Vishnu Prasanna; P. Uma Maheshwaran lost to G.A. Stany; S.S. Manigandan drew with V.A.V. Rajesh; M. Dusthageer Ibrahim drew with S. Nithin).
Andhra Bank lost to Maharashtra 1.5-2.5 (M. Vinay Kumar lost to Sagar Shah; J. Ramakrishna bt Snehal Bhosale; B.V. Ramanamurthy drew with Sohan Phadke; P. Kamalakar lost to Amardeep Bartakke).
Women: Tamil Nadu lost to Air India 0.5-3.5 (V. Varshini lost to Tania Sachdev; R. Vaishali drew with Bhakti Kulkarni; S. Bharkavi lost to S. Vijayalakshmi; S.V. Sathya Priya lost to S. Meenakshi).
AAI bt AP 4-0 (Mary Ann Gomes bt Ch.Siva Sai Sugandhi; Padmini Rout bt P. Anushka Raj; Nimmy A. George bt G. Akhila; R. Bharathi bt Ch. Bhavana).
Race Academy (AP) lost to PSPB 0.5-3.5 (B. Pratyusha drew with Nisha Mohota; Ch. Sahjasri lost to Sowmya Swaminathan; Anigani Kavya lost to M. Mahalakshmi; V. Toshali lost to P. Michelle Catherina).
LIC bt Goa 3.5-05 (K. Bindu Saritha bt Krystal Fernandez; Swathi Ghate bt T. Aishwarya; Kiran Manisha Mohanty bt Gauri Keshav Hadkonkar; Manjul Srivastava drew with Urvi Bandekar).