Petroleum Sports Promotion Board takes sole lead

Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) emerged the sole leader with 12 points in the men’s event after warding off a spirited challenge from Indian Railways ‘A’ in the sixth round of the National team chess championship for men and women here on Sunday. PSPB scored a 2.5-1.5 victory.

To the credit of GM Abhijeet Gupta, who was locked in the last game of the day against IM Swapnil Dhopade, the former salvaged a crucial draw after a marathon encounter lasting 86 moves on the top board.

In the women’s section, Air India took the sole lead with 10 points as WGM S. Vijayalakshmi continued to play a key role with an impressive win over Sowmya Swaminathan to give her team a 2.5-1.5 verdict over PSPB.

The results: Men (sixth round): Indian Railways ‘A’ lost to PSPB 1.5-2.5 (Swapnil S. Dhopade drew with Abhijeet Gupta; Arghyadip Das drew with B. Adhiban; R.R. Laxman lost to S.P. Sethuraman; Saptarshi Chowdhury drew with M.R. Lalith Babu).

Indian Railways ‘B’ bt Tamil Nadu ‘B’ 3.5-0.5 (M. S. Thejkumar bt M. Vinoth Kumar; Himanshu Sharma drew with R.A. Pradeep Kumar; Akshat Kamparia bt Ram S. Krishnan; Saptarshi Roy bt D.S. Shashank).

LIC drew with Air India 2-2 (Anup Deshmukh drew with S. Satyapragyan; Sriram Jha drew with Tejas Bakre; Atanu Lahiri drew with Chandrasekhar Gokhale; K. Dinesh Sharma drew with G. B. Joshi).

Maharashtra drew with Tamil Nadu ‘C’ 2-2 (Sagar Shah drew with Arvindh Chithambaram; Snehal Bhosale lost to P. Uma Maheshwaran; Sohan Phadke drew with S.S. Manigandan; S. Amardeep bt Ibrahim Dusthageer).

Andhra Bank bt West Bengal 2.5-1.5 (M. Vinay Kumar bt Rupankar Nath; J. Ramakrishna drew with Santu Mondal; K.V. Subrahmanyam bt Niladri Shekhar Bhattacharya; B.V. Ramanamurthy lost to Debasish Mukherjee).

Women (fifth round):

PSPB lost to Air India 1.5-2.5 (Rucha Pujari drew with Tania Sachdev; Nisha Mohota drew with Bhakti Kulkarni; Sowmya Swaminathan lost to S. Vijayalakshmi; M. Meenakshi drew with S. Meenakshi).

AAI bt Tamil Nadu 4-0 (Many Ann Gomes bt V. Varshini; Padmini Rout bt R. Vishali; Nimmy A. George bt S. Bharkavi; R. Bharathi bt S.V. Sathya Priya).

LIC lost to Race Academy, AP 1.5-2.5 (K. Bindu Saritha lost to Bodda Pratyusha; Swathi Ghate drew with Ch. Sahajasri; Kiran Manisha Mohanty bt Hinduja Reddy; Manjul Srivastava lost to A. Kavya).

Goa bt Cyber Chess Academy, Hyd 3.5-0.5 (Aditee Aman Prabhugaonkar drew with P. Ankitha Goud; Krystal Fernandez bt B. Shivani; T. Aishwarya bt S. Sree Rohitha; Gauri Keshav Hadkonkar bt K. Vinita).