Konguvel shocked

On the second board, N Neelakantan complicated the game against highly rated T S Ravi by sacrificing a knight. Both the players were caught in severe time pressure and were left to complete their remaining 20 moves in just two minutes.

They blitzed remaining moves but in the process Neelakantan gave a wrong check and could complete only nine moves and lost on time. IM Sudhakar Babu, who was out of form in the recently concluded Nationals A8217; championships at Bhilai, helped himself with another convincing win against Vivek Shukla.

In four knight game, seasoned Babu displayed fine positional understanding and showed his superior endgame technique to outplay young Vivek Shukla.Also joining the leaders Nasir Ali, Ravi, Babu, and V Saravanan were Rahul Shetty and young Roktim Bandopadhyay who defeated A L Kasi and Kiran Panditrao respectively.

Among the women players, WIM Anupama Gokhale and veteran Pushpalata Mangal scored quick wins and moved to three points each.

Important results fourth round: P Konguvel 3 lost to S Nasir Ali 4, T S Ravi 4 bt N Neelkanthan 3, Vivek Shukla 3 lost to N Sudhakar Babu 4, V Saravanan 4 bt Hari Om Sharma 3, Atanu Lahiri 3.5 drew Ravi Hegde 3.5, Rahul Shetty 4 bt A L Kasi 3, R Bandopadhyay 4 bt Kiran Panditrao 3, Pankaj Pendalwar 3 lost to Jayant Gokhale 3.5, V Koshy 3.5 bt S K Sinha 2.5, S K Rathore 2.5 lost to S Kidambi 3.5, A B Vaidya 3.5 bt Deepak Rajpal 2.5.