The Hindu : Soumitra posts upset of the day

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 18, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Soumitra posts upset of the day

By D. Ravi Shankar

BANGALORE July 17. The opening day of the National Youth chess tournament saw the top seeds cruise ahead. The upset of the day was on the sixth board where young Soumitra Majumdar, just 13 years old, defeated Sourabh Kherdekar (Elo rating 2270) in 39 moves.

Others to notch up impressive wins were Kruthika Nadig, who beat Riasuddin, and 11-year-old K. Narayanan, who defeated N. Satish Kumar.

K. Narayanan, a student of Uthaiah Alagappa Matriculation School in Kottaiyoor, was pitted against donor entrant Satish Kumar of Karnataka. The game, which went on the Queen's Gambit accepted lines, saw Narayanan making optimum use of the opening moves and gaining space. Satish Kumar began to feel the pressure on the c7 pawn. Narayanan stepped up the queen-side pressure very well and pocketed a pawn. Within 30 moves Narayanan built up a clear winning position with a systematic annihilation of the pawns. Satish added to his troubles by blundering away his queen and resigned on the 39th move.

Kruthika Nadig, the bronze medalist at the Asian tournament at Teheran, played to a French defence. The game was cautious with both players mainly opting to establish positions. Kruthika sacrificed a pawn on the 35th move, but her opponent Riasuddin soon left his pieces uncoordinated and thereby weakened. Riasuddin, who is nine places below Kruthika on the Elo ratings, tipped his king over on the 39th move.

The third board saw an interesting tussle between K. Ratnakaran of Kerala and Harkamal Singh. The game progressed on a typical King's Indian Attack with both players unable to get a clear advantage. A bishop sacrifice on the 35th move by Ratnakaran ended up with Harkamal coming under pressure. Harkamal, who needed to complete his next five moves to beat the clock, faltered and at the end of the 40th move his flag was still down. Ratnakaran was alert and claimed a win on time fault, which the chief arbiter Raja Ravi Shekar was clear about to signal a win.

However, the game was well poised for Ratnakaran to complete a win in the next five to six moves.

Neelotpal Das made his first move nb3 and sat and waited for an hour. His opponent Arjun Tiwari failed to show up and after the mandatory one-hour wait the game was awarded to the top seed. On the 10th board, too, Ankur Dhariwal waited for Thej Kumar and with the latter failing to turn up Ankur was declared winner. Akash Thakur also gained a walk-over from M. Kirthi Singh.

The quickest finish came in Prathik Khanna's match against Navneeth Krishnan. Prateek, an eight-year-old from the United States, lost out to his older rival Navneeth Krishna in just 20 moves.

The results:

Neelotpal Das w/o Arjun Tiwari; Ismit Singh lost to Prathamesh Mokal; K. Ratnakaran bt S. Harkamal Singh; Shubham Das lost to Saptarishi Roy Choudary; Pankaj Joshi bt Dewam Modi; Soumitra Majumdar bt Sourabh Kherdekar; Syed Anwar Shazzul bt Vikranth; Sathyanarayan lost to Valay Parekh; S. Kotwal lost to H. Deshpande; Ankur Dhariwal w/o Thej Kumar; Himasnhu Sharma bt Jilesh Gandhi; K. Ramesh drew with J. Ramakrishna; Akash Thakur w/o Kirthi Singh; R. Chouhan lost to Prasenjit Dutta; Saptarishi Roy drew with B. Alankar; M.P. Ajith lost to Vinod Sharma; Vikas Sharma bt Agasthya; R. Srinivasan drew with G.N. Gopal; H.D. Jagadish bt D. Aruna; J. Sharma drew with K. Vijaykeerthi; P. Srikanth lost to V. Karthik; R. Praveen lost to Kumar; Rakesh Aggarwal bt K. Agarpota; Hardik Jha drew with P. Satyanarayan; Sriram Sarja bt Damodar Dev; Manoj Arora drew with P. Rajesh; Prathik Sariwas bt P.V. Santosh; P.P. Prachura lost to D. Prabhakaran; N. Vinuthna bt S. Yashas; Abhas Kumar drew with Akshay Raj Kore; J. Utharid drew with Ganesh Battur; Prathik Khanna lost to Navneeth Krishna; Srikanth Sharma bt P. Pawan; Dheeraj bt Nirmal; Kruthika Nadig bt Riasuudin; Saket Sharma lost to R.S. Bhatti; Soham Das bt D.P. Singh; J. Basu lost to B. Chatterji; K. Narayanan bt N. Satish Kumar.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport