Bhilare, Saxena share lead

Ganesh with black pieces and Vaibhav with white pieces defeated Amol Wagale and Raj Parakh in the fifth-round, respectively. Balaji and Pulekar, both with white pieces prevailed over Abhijit Bhurke (Podar College) and former National B’ player Anirudha Sanzgiri respectively.

Wagale remained on the third spot with four points along with another former National B player Rajan Rajadhyaksha, Vakil Akhtar, AN Iyer (Bank of India), Prakash Patole, Kiran Kamble, Devkaran Bhatty and school-boy Akash Khalwadekar.

Bhilare, who played his favourite French Defence against Wagale, captured a white pawn on the20th move. Wagale consumed lot of time unnecessarily and failed to make his 30th move before the red-flag of his clock fell down. In this event each player has to make the first 30 moves in 90 minutes. So Wagale lost on time.

On the next board, the position of the clocks was reversed. Saxena against Parakh was in a commanding position but had only few seconds left on his clock in the second time trouble. Surprisingly Parakh agreed to defeat without waiting for his opponent’s flag to fall.

Bhurke’s overambitious play was punished by top seed Balaji. Bhurke captured one white pawn by his knight on the tenth move. Balaji played accurately to trap the black knight. Bhurke resigned on the 23rd move after losing one more piece.

Pulekar tied down Sanzgiri’s bishop on c8 square till the end of the game in a Sicilian Defence battle. Pulekar kept his white king on original e1 square without castling and sacrificed a’ pawn to initiate dangerous attack on black King on g8 square after opening h’ file. Sanzgiridefended his king perfectly but failed in the end game when both players had one rook, one bishop and two pawns each and resigned on the 46th move.