Chanda gets three-man company at top

Shetty faced the Modern Defence from Koshy. He sacrificed his A file pawn to gain an initiative after a sharp battle. Koshy came under time pressure and was losing a piece before he resigned after 28 moves.

The Harikrishna-Ganguly went along the English opening. Harikrishna faced pressure on the queen-side. The former world under-10 champion made a few draw offers but Ganguly rejected it. The Bengal youngster then went on to sacrifice an exchange and win the game in 44 moves.

K Murugan andSundararajan Kidambi drew after 33 moves in a King’s Indian Defence Classical Variation set-up. From the double-edged position, Kidambi had a good attack but misplayed some moves.

There are nine players in the second position with 7.5 points and among them is National Women’s champion S Vijayalakshmi. The others are Ravi Hegde, K Murugan, Kidambi, Anup Deshmukh, Shekar Sahu, RB Ramesh, Neelotpal Das, Vishal Sareen and Sriram Jha.

Vijayalakshmi defeated Karnataka youngster Tejkumar from Queens Gambit Declined set-up. Not only that Viji had a good position but Tejkumar also faced time pressure and lost after 40 moves.

Deshmukh and Sahu drew after 42 moves; top seed RB Ramesh, after lying low for some rounds, has come back into the main frame with a win against SK Sinha; Neelotpal Das defeated Gurpreet Pal Singh; Vishal Sareen won against Arjun Tiwari, the boy who has scalped many rated players in this tournament and Jha won against Ramkrishna Kashelkar.

With three rounds to go, and a possible 9.5points guaranteeing a place among the top 13 that will qualify for the National A, the fight is really on. Among the notable upset was the loss of National Sub-junior champion P Mahesh Chandran to Amar Kamath. Thirteen-year-old Kamath is in the third position with seven points.

Results

10th round: Ravi Hegde 7.5 drew Sandipan Chanda 8; K Murugan 7.5 drew Sundararajan Kidambi 7.5; Rahul Shetty 8 bt Verghese Koshy 7; Anup Deshmukh 7.5 drew Shekar Sahu 7.5; P Harikrishna 7 lost to Surya Shekar Ganguly 8; TS Ravi 8 bt Dipanjan Das 7; RB Ramesh 7.5 bt SK Sinha 6.5; Gurpreet Pal Singh 6.5 lost to Neelotpal Das 7.5; Vishal Sareen 7.5 bt Arjun Tiwari 6.5; Sriram Jha 7.5 bt Ramkrishna Kashelkar 6.5; Nassir Wajih 7 drew Sacchidanand Soman 7; S Vijayalakshmi 7.5 bt Tejkumar 6.5; CS Gokhale 7 bt V Hariharan 6; Atanu Lahiri 7 bt J Ramkrishna 6; Rajesh Bahadur 6 lost to Dinesh Sharma 7; S Satyapragyan 6.5 drew TV Karthikeyan 6.5; Vedant Goswami 6 lost to Pritam Singh 7; TS Venkataraman 7 bt Vikas Sharma6; H Sharma 6 lost to Saurabh Kherdekar 7; Shashikant Kutwal 6 lost to M Srinivas Rao 7; Amar Kamath 7 bt P Mahesh Chandran 6.

Five in lead: Five players, including four rated players, lead with three points at the end of the third round in open category of the chess tournament organised by the Gokuldham Chess Club on the first day.

VN Solanki, Yashraj Aidasani, Ashish Thatte, Y Dishan Singh and Dr Sunil Bhoir are on top with three points. Top seed Anuj Pandit and No 4 seed Chetan Lokhande were leading with two points at the end of second round in the under-16.