Das survives scare

AURANGABAD, JULY 22: Three pawns up and in a winning position, International Master-elect Neelotpal Das still looked tense. Relief came o...

AURANGABAD, JULY 22: Three pawns up and in a winning position, International Master-elect Neelotpal Das still looked tense. Relief came only after opponent, IWM Nisha Mohota decided to resign stepping into sudden death time.

Neelotpal 7.5 points hung on to his half point advantage at the end of the eighth round in the Rs two lakh prize money All-India Open FIDE rating chess tournament, here, today.

With three rounds to go, the Calcutta lad is followed by TS Ravi IOC and N Sanjay IT in the race for top honours and the first prize of Rs 55,000.

Das took advantage of white8217;s weak King side for attack, after the Nimzo Indian opening, but made some minor mistake in the middle game. Nisha got some opening but threw away her chances by selecting a wrong move on the 33rd. This weakened her position. Some defensive lapses cost her two pawns and was faced with a strong King side attack from the black.

Das took the game into queen-pawn ending, being three pawns up. However, Nisha toiled hard towards theend and tried for perpetual checks without success. She resigned on the 59th move with two minutes left on her clock to enter sudden death.

IM and fourth seed Lanka Ravi played an inaccurate game to blunder his rook and lost his queen. This gave back white the advantage and TS Ravi forced Lanka Ravi to resign in the 43rd move.

On the third board, N Sanjay upset win top seed, IM RB Ramesh 5.5. The latter miscalculated the opening Slav defence combination and sacrificed a rook and a piece to get an attack on the white8217;s King. However, he could not get much compensation for his sacrifice and later in the game lost the other rook and bishop to resign on the 20th move. The sixth board too witnessed an upset, when S Satyapragyan defeated thrice Women8217;s National A8217; champion S Vijayalakshmi on the 41st move, in the Ruy Lopez opening. Viji Elo 2326 could not recover from her middle game mistake at f68242; and blundered with her bishop on the 40th move to resign. Viji now has 5.5 points, while Satyapragyan Elo2278 is placed third with RK Mishra with 6.5 points.

Important 8th round results

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IWM Nisha Mohota WB 6 lost to Neelotpal Das GCA 7.5; TS Ravi IOC 7 bt IM Lanka Ravi ONGC 6; N Sanjay IT 7 bt IM RB Ramesh IOC 5.5; SK Rathod MP 5.5 lost to RK Mishra MP 6.5; GB Joshi IAL 5 drew with Shankar Roy E Rlys 6; S Satyapragyan Ori 6.5 bt IWM S Vijayalakshmi IAL 5.5; PDS Girinath TN 5 lost to Sandeepan Chanda GCA 6; CS Gokhale IAL 5.5 drew with R Bandopadhyay WB 5.5; Vedant Goswami Raj 6 bt Suvrajit Shah 5; IM Sudhakar Babu IB 6 bt Mahesh Chandra TN 5; P Harikrishna AP 6 bt Vishal Sarin Del 5; SS Ganguly GCA 6 bt TV Karnatakiya 5; Milind Gavande Mah 5 lost to Rahul Shetty IAL 5.5.