Roktim outwits Harish

By Our Sports Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 23. Young Roktim Bandopadhayay clinched a memorable win against former Delhi champion Harish Sharma to swell his points tally to six after the seventh round of the NIIT All-India Open Rating chess championship here on Monday.

As the tussles on the top boards got hotter, eighth seeded Neeraj Kumar Mishra and Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury, the ninth seed, played safe and split the points.

With the win Roktim (6) has confirmed his place on the top boards, Mishra (6) and Saptarshi (6) also got there without much ado.

In a Symmetric English Opening, Mishra gained slight advantage over Saptarshi. But with the championship entering the eighth round, Saptarshi proposed Mishra a draw and he gladly agreed.

Tenth seeded Vedant Goswami (5) also opted for a draw against Avinash Sethi (5). In an English Opening Goswami had the space advantage on the queen side. He could have gone for the win but allowed a knight sacrifice in the centre and in the following counter-attack he had to give back the piece.

Goswami was a pawn down but it was a kind of blockade and the two decided to draw the game after 41 moves.

All other top board games were in progress with top seeded national U-25 champion Satyapragyan (5.5) of the Indian Airlines up against the surprise leader Santosh Kumar Sinha (6).

Second seed Sriram Jha (5.5) and P. D. S. Girinath (5.5) were also locked in a keen battle with only two pawns exchanged after two hours of play.

Important results (seventh round): Neeraj Mishra (6) drew with Saptarshi Chowdhury (6); Roktim Bandopadhyay (6) bt Harish Sharma; Ravi Khanna (5) lost to Surender Kumar (6); Biswajit Roy Chowdhury (6) bt Akshay Kumar Jain (5); Rajesh Kumar (5) lost to Diwakar Prasad Singh (6); K. C. Joshi (5) lost to Pramod Kumar Singh; Praveen Karnwal (5) lost to Suman Kumar Singh (6); Vedant Goswami (5) drew with Avinash Sethi (5); Jayalakshmi (4) lost to R. K. Gupta (5); Pawan Kumar (4) lost to Mahesh Kumar Jain (5); A. Chidananda (4) lost to Rajesh Kumar Nath (5); A. V. S. Vijaya Kumar lost to Ram Kishan (5); Amit Mehrotra (4) lost to S. K. Nanda (5); Rajesh Kumar (4) w/o Ashu Rawat (5); Deepak Rai (5) bt Satbir Singh (4); S. C. D. Devgun (5) bt Gagan Bahl (4); S. K. Chetry (4.5) drew with Gaurav Nangia (4.5); S. V. Krishnan (4) lost to Jiby M. (5); Ishmael D. Dou (5) bt T. S. Sathish Kumar (4); Kamal Singh (4) lost to T. R. Chibber (5); Sanjeev Ghosh (4.5) drew with Kapil Gupta (4.5); Khakhai Zou (5) w/o V. Krishnamachari (4); Yuzvendra S. Chahal (4.5) drew with Amit Kumar Gupta (4); Aditya Dutta (3.5) lost to Sankalp Modwal (4.5); J. M. Baisakh 4.5) bt Rajiv Choudhary (3.5); Ravinder Vasisht (3.5) lost to Jain Shrenik Daklia (3.5); L. Dhanunjaya Rao (4) drew with Santosh Kumar Singh (4).

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