Ramesh, Sriram suffer shock defeats

Ramesh started the game with his favourite king pawn with white pieces and faced the Sicilian Nazdorf of Arghyadeep. In a sharp variation akin to the English Attack, Ramesh eased black’s postion in the middlegame with a trade of knights and was saddled with a weak structure on the Kingside.

Arghyadeep found counter-attacking measures and struck upon a fine combination to record a memorable victory.

On the top board GM norm holder Sandipan Chanda settled for a draw against Syed Anwar Shazuli as the game entered a dull middlegame.

Important Results: SA Shazuli 2.5 drew S Chanda 2.5; GB Prakash 2.5 drew Parikh 2.5; PM Mohanty 2 lost to N Das 3; CJ Arvind 2.5 drew A Lahiri 2.5; Satyapragyan 2.5 drew Thej Kumar 2.5; S Kherdekar 2 lost to K Murugan 3; P Konguvel 3 beat N Wajih 2; Swati Ghate 2.5 drew D K Sharma 2.5; SK Sinha 2 lost to N S Babu 3; Ravi Kumar 2 lost to T Bakre 3; S Kutwal 2.5 drew CS Gokhale 2.5; S Saha 2.5 drew A Shastry 2.5; RS Gupta 2.5 drew P Mithrakanth 2.5; MK Panigrahi 2.5 drew Shankar Roy 2.5; E Joseph 3 beat BTM Krishna 2; JS Gokhale 2 lost to D Das 3; R P Sarma 2.5 drew SC Sahu 2.5; B Bhatia 2 lost to GP Singh 3; N K Mishra 2.5 drew J Ramakrishna 2.5; H Deshmukh 2 lost to V Sareen 3; R Balasubramanium 3 beat C N Vaidya 2.