Ganguly shocked by Deepan

Hyderabad, Mar 1 (UNI) International Master Deepan Chakravarthy handed a shock defeat to national champion and Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly to retain sole lead with six points after the end of the sixth round in the ONGC Cup International Grandmasters Chess tournament here today.

With his sixth victory on the trot, Chakravarthy, a former Asian junior champion, was now aiming for his second Grandmaster norm in this Rs 8.27 lakh prize money tournament. The nearest contender of the young Indian was Grandmaster Alexander Fominyh of Russia, who ended the dream run of Somak Palit in a professional display of positional chess. The Russian was closely on the heels of Chakravarthy now on 5.5 points.

A pack of 11 players, including second seed Grandmaster Pavel Kotsur of Kazakhstan, Grandmaster elects G B Prakash and Reefat Bin Sattar of Bangladesh, GM norm holder S Kidambi and local stars M R Lalith Babu and K Ramu were also in the reckoning for top honours having five points each in their kitty.

Chakravarthy was a touch lucky in the beginning as the Chennai based player was seen fishing in troubled waters against Ganguly who played the black side of a Sicilian Kan variation. As the game progressed Ganguly failed to find the way to equalize and even his draw offer early in the game was promptly turned down by Chakravarthy.

As the pieces changed hands at regular intervals, Chakravarthy seized a fine opportunity to knock down one black pawn and transposed to a rook and pawns endgame. Having recently got trained by Grandmaster Elzibar Ubilava of Spain, Chakravarthy's endgame technique was a treat to watch in the remaining part of the games as Ganguly's hope of a miracle on board never saw the light of the day.

The game lasted 65 moves.

On another matech, Fominyh defeated Palit in a Catalan opening where the former played white. Exerting pressure on the queenside, Fominyh forcibly won two minor pieces for a rook and the remaining technicalities were no problems. Palit resigned on the 37th move when he was facing further material deficit.

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