Defending champion Petroleum Sports Promotion Board scored a 2.5-1.5 win over LIC in the men’s third round in the 11th National team chess championship at the Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy Indoor Stadium here on Friday.
On the first table, 47-year-old Anup Deshmukh of LIC got the better of Abhijeet Gupta in the Samish Variation opted by the latter against his King’s Indian line.
The first few moves were on expected lines but once Abhijeet deviated, his pieces got misplaced putting the king under pressure, Deshmukh said later. With an exchange and a pawn down, there was no way Abhijeet could save the game and he had to resign after 45 moves. In fact Anup had been Abhijeet’s coach for three years about a decade ago.
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However, Abhijeet’s teammates B. Adhiban and S.P. Sethuraman scored facile wins and M.R. Lalith Babu settled for a draw to guide favourite PSPB to victory.
Six teams are leading with six match points at the end of the third round in the men’s section.
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Third round: Men: PSPB bt LIC 2.5-1.5 (Abhijeet Gupta lost to Anup Deshmukh, B. Adhiban bt Sriram Jha, S.P. Sethuraman bt Atanu Lahiri, M.R. Lalith Babu drew with K. Dinesh Sharma).
Tamil Nadu ‘A’ lost to Indian Railways ‘A’ 0.5-3.5 (M.V. Laskhmi Narayan lost to Swapnil S. Dhopade; T.U. Navina Kanna drew with Arghyadip Das; B. Kumaran lost to Saptarshi Roy Chowdury; N.R. Vikash lost to Somak Palit).
AAI bt Maharashtra Chess Association 3-1 (V. Vishnu Prasanna drew with Sagar Shah; G.A. Stany bt Atul Dahale; Swayams Mishra bt Sohan Phadke; S. Nitin drew with S. Amardeep Bartakke).
Cyber Chess Academy lost to Indian Railways ‘B’ 0.5-3.5 (Deepak Katiyar lost to Himanshu Sharma; V. Karthik lost to Akshat Khamparia; M. Surya Narayana drew with K. Ratnakaran; R. Raja Rithvik lost to Saptarshi Roy).
Air India bt Indian Bank 3.5-0.5 (S. Satyapragyan bt N. Sudhakar Babu; Tejas Bakre drew with G.B. Prakash; Chandrasekhar Gokhale bt K.V. Shantaram; Rahul Shetty bt K. Gopalakrishnan).
Women: AAI bt PSPB 3.5-0.5 (Dronavalli Harika bt Rucha Pujari; Mary Ann Gomes drew with Nisha Mohota; Padmini Rout bt Soumya Swaminathan; R. Bharathi bt P. Michelle Catherina).
Goa CA lost to Air India 0.5-3.5 (Aman Prabhugaonkar Aditee lost to Tania Sachdev; Fernandes Krystal lost to Bhakti Kulkarni; Aishwarya Thorat lost to S. Meenakshi; Gauri Keshav Hadkonkar drew with Aarthie Ramaswamy).
Punjab CA lost to Race Academy, AP 0-4 (Gurpreet Kaur lost to Bodda Pratyusha; Ravneet Kaur lost to Ch. Sahajasri; Malika Handa lost to Kavya Anigani; Amritpal Kaur Kang lost to V. Toshali).
LIC bt Cyber Chess Academy 3-1 (K. Bindu Saritha drew with P. Ankitha Goud; S. Vandana Bandodkar drew with B. Shivani; Swathi Ghate bt Viniti Katlamudi; Kiran Manisha Mohanty bt D. Anjali).