Harika makes a mockery of reputations

By Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR, JULY 3. Making a mockery of reputations and ratings, 11- year-old Harika Dronavalli brought down Woman Grandmaster S. Vijayalakshmi and International Woman Master Anupama Gokhale in succession to mark the biggest day of her budding career.

Having gained the respect of those present, the girl from Guntur galloped to join the bigger boys with 4.5 points after six rounds of the National `B' chess championship at the Raisoni Engineering College hall here on Tuesday.

Even as Harika went about her task of toppling the two five-time National women champions, Sandeepan Chanda, B.T. Murali Krishna and M.R. Venkatesh shared the lead with 5.5 points.

The third-seeded Chanda, an impressive winner over National junior champion P. Magesh Chandran in the fifth round, was held by Railwayman B.T. Muralidharan on the top board. Soon, the duo was joined by Venkatesh, who capitalised on an error by Chandrasekhar Gokhale on the third board.

Sriram Jha and N. Sudhakar Babu drew their second board battle to be part of the bunch of nine players with five points each. Others with a similar tally are, G.B. Prakash, V. Saravanan, Swati Ghate, Varugeese Koshy, N. Sanjay, Suvrajit Saha and R.M. Dongre. Of these, Dongre made it by scoring five wins on the trot.

Coming back to Harika's exploits on this day, it was a fitting reward for her resolve. It may be recalled that only last month in the National `A' championship, she had drawn with Anupama and lost from a winning position against Vijayalakshmi. Today, she gave nothing away.

In Reti Opening, Harika allowed the space advantage to Vijayalakshmi but nothing more. As the game progressed, a seemingly better-placed Vijayalakshmi erred in judgement and let Harika gain some ground. At this stage, a draw looked a fair possibility before Vijaylakshmi made another dubious choice. This time, Harika ensured that there was no comeback for the strongest woman player in the country.

If the result gave Harika her biggest victory, it also ended in Vijayalakshmi's first loss to an unrated player after becoming a Woman Grandmaster last year. The defeat was Vijayalakshmi's third in four rounds and took her tumbling down to the 81st board. She duly won against Mizoram's Liana Zohming and found a reason to feel better after being repeatedly embarrassed over the past two days.

Even as Vijayalakshmi scored a much-needed victory, Harika went ahead and nailed Anupama before the first time- control of their match which followed the King's Indian Defence. In this positional battle, Anupama lost a pawn in the middle- game. Thereafter, it did not take long for Harika to force Anupama to resign.

The results:

Sixth round: B. T. Murali Krishna (5.5) drew with Sandeepan Chanda (5.5); Sriram Jha (5) drew with N. Sudhakar Babu (5); M.R. Venkatesh (5.5) bt C.S. Gokhale (4.5); G.B. Prakash (5) bt Saptarshi Roy (4); V. Saravanan (5) bt Ravikumar (4); Swati Ghate (5) bt T.S. Ravi (4); Dinesh Sharma (4.5) drew with Shashikant Kutwal (4.5); Varugeese Koshy (5) bt Nisha Mohota (4); G.B. Joshi (4) lost to N. Sanjay (5); Vikramaditya Kamble (4.5) drew with Vishal Sareen (4.5); Suvrajit Saha (4.5) drew with J. Ramakrishna (4.5); Shankar Roy (4.5) drew with Manish Joshi (4.5); Preetham Sharma (4.5) drew with Jayant Gokhale (4.5); P. Magesh Chandran (4.5) drew with G. Rohit (4.5); R.M. Dongre (5) bt Rahul Shetty (4); Ramakrishna Kashelkar (4) lost to R.B. Ramesh (4.5); S. Meenakshi (3.5) lost to S. Kidambi (4.5); V. Hariharan (3.5) lost to S. Satyapragyan (4.5); Santosh Kumar Sinha (3.5) lost to Lanka Ravi (4.5); Prathamesh Mokal (4) drew with Nassir Wajih (4); Pramod Kumar Singh (4) drew with Anup Deshmukh (4); Kiran Panditrao (4) drew with Satchidanand Soman (4); T.V. Karthikeyan (4.5) bt Himanshu Sharma (3.5); Deep Sengupta (4) drew with Vedant Goswami (4); Deepan Chakraborty (4.5) bt Surender Sharma (3.5); Pankaj Joshi (4.5) bt B.V. Prakash (3.5); K. Gopalakrishnan (4) drew with Roktim Bandopadhyaya (4); Ajay Pandey (4) drew with S.K. Rathod (4); Laxmana D. Rao (3.5) lost to R.S. Gupta (4.5); R. Upadhyaya (4.5) bt C. Natrajan (3.5); Saurabh Kherdekar (4.5) bt Abhijit Gupta (3.5); Harika Dronavalli (4.5) bt Anupama Gokhale (3.5); Neelotpal Das (3.5) drew with Vikas Sharma (3.5); Sekhar Sahu (4) bt Dilip Das (3); K.V. Shantaram (4) bt K. Nikhilesh Kumar (3).

Fifth round: Sandeepan Chanda bt P. Magesh Chandran; C.S. Gokhale drew with Sriram Jha; Shashikant Kutwal lost to B.T. Murali Krishna; Jayant Gokhale drew with G.B. Prakash; Rahul Shetty drew with Dinesh Sharma; Lanka Ravi lost to M.R. Venkatesh; N. Sudhakar Babu bt Deep Sengupta; Ravikumar drew with Varugeese Koshy; Swati Ghate drew with Suvrajit Saha; Prasenjit Dutta lost to V. Saravanan; J. Ramakrishna bt Neelotpal Das; S. Satyapragyan drew with Prathamesh Mokal; T.S. Ravi bt K. Ratnakaran; N. Sanjay bt Manoj Mishra; Vishal Sareen bt N. Neelakanthan; Manish Joshi bt Sekhar Sahu; D.P. Singh lost to Shankar Roy; Saptarshi Roy bt D. Ravishankar; Vedant Goswami drew with K. Gopalkrishnan; Kiran Panditrao drew with Deepan Chakravarthi; Gurpreet Pal Singh lost to R.M. Dongre; Himanshu Sharma drew with Pankaj Joshi; Roktim Bandopadhyaya drew with Surender Sharma; S.K. Rathod drew with R. Upadhayaya; Pradip Ghosh lost to G.B. Joshi; Ramakrishna Kashelkar bt Ashwani Tiwari; Nisha Mohota bt G. Balaji; Dilip Das lost to Preetham R. Sharma; Vikramaditya Kamble bt R.C. Gupta; G. Rohit bt Atanu Lahiri; R.B. Ramesh bt Sudhir Kumar Sinha; S. Kidambi bt K. Lakshminarayanan; Nassir Wajih bt Nasir Ali; Anup Deshmukh bt Anirban Guha Roy; Satchidanand Soman bt Saimeera Ravi.

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