Shetty reigns supreme

NAGPUR, AUG 21: Rahul Shetty of Indian Airlines, Mumbai, benefitted from the psychological superiority he enjoyed against Shanker Roy and a...

NAGPUR, AUG 21: Rahul Shetty of Indian Airlines, Mumbai, benefitted from the psychological superiority he enjoyed against Shanker Roy and agreed for a short draw to walk away with the title at the 4th BPCL FIDE Rating Chess tournament which concluded here today.

In the last round today afternoon, Shetty8217;s draw in nine moves of Caro-Kann defence with Roy of Eastern Railways made him finish with nine and half points. He had a haul of 25 ELO points also. Roy finished second with nine points on better tie-break, while Neelotpal Das of West Bengal was third.

Shetty ELO rating 2275, who had won the SK Vaidya tournament at Sangli earlier this year, with 50 points from two victories, is still far away from the coveted International Master norm which needs 2400 points.

Local challenger Anup Deshmukh beat J Venkataramana of ICF Perambur in 40 moves. In English opening Venkataramana8217;s gambit pawn was successfully tamed by Deshmukh. In a bid to trap Anup8217;s queen the ICF man sacrificed further material. But he lost his own queen.

In a keen contest, Survajit Saha of West Bengal overcames Kidambi of Tamil Nadu in 56 moves. In the Indian defence Saha neutralised black8217;s king side attack and exchanged the queens. Saha with the help of his strong quot;Cquot; passer won an exchange and went on to bag the game.

Important results last round: Rahul Shetty 9.5 drew with Shankar Roy 9, Sudhakar Babu 8.5 drew with R B Ramesh 8.5, Nilotpal Das 9 bt R Balasubramanium 8, Suvrajit Saha 8.5 bt S Kidambi 8, Vivek Shukla 7.5 lost to V Saravanan 8.5, J Venkatramana 7.5 lost to Anup Deshmukh 8.5, Atanu Lahiri 8 drew with Jayant Gokhale 8. Santosh Kumar Sinha 7 lost to T S Ravi 8, P D S Girinath 7 lost to Brajesh Agrawal 8, G B Joshi 8 bt Gajendra Singh 7, K Visweswaran 7 lost to S S Ganguly 8, A B Vaidya 8 bt Prasenjit Dutta 7, Dilip Pagey 7.5 drew with Sandipan Chanda 7.5, Rajesh Bahadur 8 bt Hari Om Sharma 6.5, S S Soman 7.5 bt R V Gokhale 6.5. N Neelakantan 7 drew with Santosh Shelke 7, Sujit Kumar Sinha 7 drew with J C Katdare 7, Pankaj Joshi 6.5 lost to Laltu Chatterjee 7.5, Umesh Panbude 7.5 bt Manoj Mishra 6.5, V K N Solanki 7 drew with Mrunalini Kunte 7, Raminder Bir Singh 6.5 lost to Sashikant Kutwal 7.5, K V S Sudhakar 7.5 bt M Saimeera 6.5, N Jyothilal 7.5 bt R D Salodkar 6.5, Saurabh Kherdekar 7.5 bt Pranjal Das 6.5, Krishna Soni 7 drew with S Nasir Ali 6.5.