Humpy continues to crush opponents, maintains lead

Visakhapatnam, Apr 8 (UNI) Grand Master Konery Humpy today maintained his lead in the 32nd National A chess championship being played here, with a furent victory over IM Dinesh Kumar Sharma of LIC.

In joint second place are GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly of Indian Oil Corporation and IM J Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu.

Humpy who faced the Slav defence from Sharma, obtained a favourable pawn structure out of the opening and out manouevred her opponent in her customary style.

In the women's ''A'' championship being held alongside, Women Grand Master Swathi Ghate of LIC continued to lead with 5 points inspite of a shocking defeat today against tailender Swati Mohota of West Bengal. Teenagers Mary Ann Gomes of West bengal and L Iswarya Shobana of Tamil Nadu closely follow the leader with 4.5 points each.

Iswarya Shobana, a first student of MOP Vaishnava college, Chennai scored an upset victory over former National Champion WGM Aarthie of Indian Airlines from the Black side of the Sicilian Najdorf defence in 30 moves.

Though it was Aarthie who too the early advantage after crippling Black's King side pawns, Iswarya patiently defended and prevented White's Knight from occupying an outpost. With the clock ticking away, Aarthie overlooked a Knight fork which cost her the exchange and soon the game.

For Swathi Ghate, it was a terrible disappointment when she blundered her well posted Knight against Swati Mohota. Ghate who had the white pieces, chose the fianchetto setup aganist the Scandinavian defence and spent goood effort in obtaining a advanteageous situation. However, she failed to see her pawn being pinned by the Black Bishop and that cost her dearly.

Meanwhile Swati Mohota's sister and the reigning champion Nisha Mohota scored over mary Ann Gomes. In a balanced position which arose from Nimzo Indian defence, Mary unneccessarily sacrificed a pawn on the Queen side. This only allowed White's pieces to infiltrate and trap the valuable Black Queen.

In the encounter between two Women Grandmaster's Andhra Pradesh's Dronavalli Harika scored over Esha Karavade of Maharashtra from the white side of the Grunfled defence.

Round 8 Results (Men) : Koneru, Humpy (6.5) beat Sharma, Dinesh K. (2) Gupta, Abhijeet (3.5) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy J. (6) Singh, D.P. (5) beat Sriram Jha (2) Ganguly, Surya Shekhar (6) beat Girinath, P.D.S. 1.5 Venkatesh, M.R. (5) drew with Thejkumar, M. S. (3) Sivanandan, B.S. 3 lost to Sandipan, Chanda (4) Abhijit Kunte (4) beat Ramesh, R.B. (4) Himanshu, Sharma (3) drew with Kamble, Vikramaditya (3) Lanka Ravi(2) lost to Arghyadip Das 3.5 Roy Chowdhury (5) drew with Arun Prasad, S. (3.5) S Kidamby (4.5)- no game today.

UNI XR YA VP0040