Deepan marches on, Swati Ghate draws with Meenakshi

By Staff
|
Google Oneindia News

Visakhapatnam, Apr 16 (UNI) Grandmaster-elect Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu consolidated his lead at the top defeating D P Singh in the 17th round of the National ''A'' Chess Championship here.

With four more rounds to go, Deepan leads the field with 13.0 points.

Following Deepan at 11.5 points is defending Champion Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly and half a point behind him are International Master M R Venkatesh and D P Singh. Swati Ghate leads in women's section with 12 points after 16 rounds.

In the top board game yesterday, Deepan defeated Singh in a Ruy Lopez game that lasted 58 moves. Undeterred by the early exchange of queens, Deepan continued to be aggressive. Right into the middle game, Deepan saw a winning knight versus bishop ending and converted his position towards it. With his mobile king and knight Deepan settled the issue comfortably and increased his lead to 1.5 points.

International Master M R Venkatesh who has been cruising along was brought down by Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly in an interesting French game.

Ganguly set his sights early on the white king, and went on with his attack in a systematic manner. He made his intentions clear with an exchange sacrifice as early as the 15th move. Venkatesh was hesitant in taking the exchange as he had to part with his valuable white bishop.

In the ensuing melee, Venkatesh overlooked a mating attack and resigned on the 35th turn. The win propels Ganguly to the second spot and pushes Venkatesh to the third spot.

Local favorite and second seed Grandmaster Koneru Humpy stemmed her losing streak with a comfortable draw against International Master Abhijeet Gupta. With 10.5 points to her credit, Humpy still can have a go at the jugular, for she can bring forth all her experience to catch up the elusive Olympic spot in the Men's team.

In the women's championship, Swathi Ghate of LIC of India stretched her lead to one point with a convincing win over six time champion and Woman Grandmaster Vijayalakshmi of LIC. The back to back defeats dims the chances of Viji, a two time Olympiad silver medallist of making to the Indian team this time.

Later last evening, she drew with S Meenakshi to take her tally to 12 points.

Koneru Humpy, in view of her rating being over 2500, is directly seeded for Indian women team while Vijayalakshmi the top seed with 2472 has to go through the 19 player championship. However if Humpy makes it to the Indian Men's team, the fourth players will get an oppurtunity to represent India in the Olympiad.

Earlier in the 15th round, Swathi Ghate defeated Vijayalakshmi in 48 moves.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann Gomes first drew with her West Bengal state mate Swati Mohota and then again split points with Soumya Swaminathan in the 16 round. She is secon placed with 11 points.

The Results (Men) Round 17 Deepan Chakravarthi (13.0) beat Singh D P (11) R B Ramesh (8) beat P D S Girinath (5.5) D K Sharma (6) beat Arghyadip Das (6) Sandipan Chanda (10.5) beat Arun Prasad S (7) Tej Kumar M S (6) lost to Saptharshi Roy Chowdhury (9) Sriram Jha (5) drew with Lanka Ravi (6) M R Venkatesh (11) lost to Ganguly S S (11.5) Shivananda B S (6) drew with Himanshu Sharma (6) Humpy Koneru (10.5) drew with Gupta Abhijeet (7.5) Kunte Abhijit (10.0) drew with Kidambi S (9.5) Vikramaditya Kamble (5) Bye (No game) The Results (Women) Round 16 Nimmy George 7.5 beat Alka Das 4 Ramya Krishna 5.5 drew with Amruta Mokal 7.5 Swathi Mohota 6 beat Esha Karvade 9 Soumya Swaminathan 4 drew with Mary Ann Gomes 11 Kiran Monisha Mohanty 7.5 drew with Nisha Mohota 10 J E Kavita 6.5 drew with D Harika 10 Swati Ghate 12 drew with S Meenakshi 10 AnupamaGokhale 4 lost to S Vijayalakshmi 9.5 Supriya Maji 6 lost to R Aarthie 8.5 Iswarya Shobana 5.5 - No game.

UNI XR DH RAI1111

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