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49th India National Premier Chess Championship - R5 |
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Friday, 14 October 2011 01:29 |
 Former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta of PSPB snatched the lead with 4.5 points by defeating the over night leader SP Sethuraman of Tamil Nadu at the end of the fifth round of the 49th National Premier Chess Championship, organised by Marathwada Chess Association at the MIT, Aurangabad, today.
GN Gopal of PSPB and Sethuraman are half a point behind Abhijeet and five players are on 3.5 points.
On the thirteenth move of the Slav defence played by Sethuraman, Abhijeet sacrificed his knight to collapse Sethu’s pawn structure on the king side. Ten moves later, he won back the piece, capitalising on Sethu’s inactive minor pieces still on their starting ranks. Sethuraman’s lone queen in the attacking front could do nothing and Ahijeet completed the formalities in just 33 moves.
GN Gopal, the only grandmaster from Kerala and the second seed in the championship activated all his pieces into the attack against his team mate V. Koshy of PSPB in a Philidor defence followed by the latter. Gopal launched a heavy attack to win in 28 moves.
In a knight vs bishop ending, former under 12 world champion Deep Sengupta of PSPB made use of his extra pawn to gain a valuable point against his team mate Sundarrajan Kidambi in 73 moves.
Defending champion Parimarjan Negi’s poor form continued, when he was shocked by WGM Padmini Rout of Orissa, rated 270 points below him in a Sicilian defence game. Already a pawn down, Negi resigned, when he was about to lose the exchange after 39 moves. Negi is languishing at the bottom with 2 points.
In a Nimzo Indian defence, Neelotpal Das, a grandmaster from PSPB miscalculated the position after exchanging the queen to lose the exchange against former under 25 national champion BT Muralikrishnan of Railways. Murali made use of the double bishop advantage to pocket a point in 31 moves.
Others on the winning side today were former national champion Pravin Thipsay of Maharashtra, Vikramaditya Kulkarni, Saptarshi Roy and K. Ratnakaran of Railways, P. Shyam Nikhil and P. Karthikeyan from Tamil Nadu, Rahul Sangma of Delhi and Girish A Kowshik of Karnataka.
R. Anantharam, International Arbiter
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