Ramesh, Gokhale have a good day in office

Dinesh Kumar Sharma started off with a mild surprise by opening with the Queen pawn against IM Mathias Roeder of Germany. In the Petrosian system of the Queen’s Indian Defence, Sharma secured a tiny edge which he enlarged in the minor piece endgame. Sharma repeated moves to get past the time trouble and then realised that he repeated the same position thrice.

Visweswaran played an interesting game from the white side of the Alekhine Defence against San Martin Ramos of spain. Exploiting an opening inaccuracy, he prevented his opponent from castling his King. He sacrificed a pawn to harass the enemy king. Missing his only chance to equalise the game, Ramos played with a rook locked away on the Kingside and resigned on the 37th move when he had to give his Queen to prevent checkmate.

CS Gokhale beat Montolio Benedicto of Spain in the Ruy Lopez opening. Benedicto handed over a large advantage to Gokhale after the opening. After the exchange of Queens, the Indian marched his King all the way to the second rank and started grabbing white’s Queenside pawns. White resigned on the 41st move.

IWM Aarthie Ramaswamy took on GM Mark Tseitlin of Israel with the Velimirovic Attack. However, she mistimed a bishop move and allowed the GM to launch a scathing attack on her King. She was forced to surrender a piece and resigned on her 35th move.

IM-elect Rahul Shetty who played the Nimzo Indian Defence with the black pieces against IM Mateo Roman obtained a comfortable position soon after the opening. He then allowed white to break through. Faced with inevitable mate, Shetty resigned.

Results: Evgeny Najer (6) drew S Sulskis (6.5); M Motylev (5.5) lost to M Kobalija (6.5); Sandipan Chanda (4) lost to B Jobava (5); M Tissir (3.5) lost RB Ramesh (4); DK Sharma (4) drew Mathias Roeder (4); K Visweswaran (4) bt San Martin Ramos (3); M Benedicto (3.5) lost to CS Gokhale (3.5); L Mateo (4.5) bt Rahul Shetty (3.5); R Aarthie (3) lost to M Tseitlin (4); Alcazar Jiminez (3) drew Sriram Jha (3).