The Hindu : Sport : Vishnu Prasanna and Mary keep winning

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 18, 2007
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Vishnu Prasanna and Mary keep winning

Rakesh Rao

MUMBAI: Vishnu Prasanna took another step towards the coveted medal bracket of the Asian junior chess championship with a surprisingly easy victory over IM Master Deep Sengupta even as contenders like Parimarjan Negi and Aswin Jayaram bounced back in the title-race after an eventful fifth round at the Goregaon Sports Club here on Monday.

The Chennai student, seeded 12, produced a masterly display with black pieces for a 43-move victory over the fourth seeded Deep and maintained his all-win sequence. A point away were Parimarjan, Aswin, M. R. Lalith Babu, B. Adhiban and P. Karthikeyan.

On Monday, Vishnu saw through Deep’s opening surprise in the Veresov variation. Deep mishandled the position in the middle-game, did not manage his time better and eventually accepted Vishnu’s superiority.

Handling pressure well

Parimarjan handled the pressure well to outplay Delhi-mate Sahaj Grover in 38 moves after seizing the initiative in the middle-game in French Defence.

Aswin raced away with his fourth straight victory after facing T. Purushothaman, the Guntur boy who created ripples early in the competition.

Like Aswin, Babu also proved stronger with black pieces following a 46-move encounter with Aniruddha Deshpande.

Karthikeyan tamed lowly-rated Snehal Bhosale to among those in the second spot. Meanwhile, local talent Aditya Udeshi slowed down Adhiban, seeded six, with a draw in 44 moves. Among the girls, defending champion Mary Ann Gomes opened up a 1.5-point lead by scoring over 12-year-old Padmini Rout on a day when the Iranian challenge in both sections fell back further.

Third seed Sayed Alavi drew with Megan Gupte and girls’ top seed Atousa Pourkashian failed to get past the defences of gritty youngster Pon N. Krithika.

Following Mary was a pack of four players — second seed Kiran Manisha Mohanty, Padmini, P. Priya and S. Harini at 3.5 points.

Gallant in defeat

Mary, who has been getting valuable pre-match guidance from her training partners Deep and Bitan Banerjee, tried the rarely-played Veresov variation against Padmini and caught her by surprise. Though Padmini may not have found the precise continuation over the board but as is her wont, the little-girl from Bhubhaneshwar battled all the way and emerged gallant in defeat that came in 45 moves.

In an interesting clash, Kiran outwitted Soumya Swaminathan in a 40-move battle between two members of the National women’s team for 2008.

Priya outwitted Kruttika Nadig on the fourth board in 45 moves while Harini scalped higher-rated Liza Shamima Akter of Bangladesh.

The results (Indians unless stated):

Fifth round: Open: Deep Sengupta (3.5) lost to Vishnu Prasanna (5); Aditya Udeshi (3.5) drew with B. Adhiban (4); Parimarjan Negi (4) bt Sahaj Grover (3); T. Purushothaman (3) lost to Aswin Jayaram (4); Aniruddha Deshpande (3) lost to M.R. Lalith Babu (4); P. Karthikeyan (4) bt Snehal Bhosale (3); Sayed Alavi (Iri) (3) drew with Mehgan Gupte (3); Akshat Khamparia (3) drew with Sagar Shah (3); Shyam Sundar ( 3.5) bt S. Nitin (2.5); S.P. Sethuraman (3) bt Abhishek Kelkar (2); Abhishek Das (2.5) drew with Rakesh Kulkarni (2.5); K. Priyadarshan (3) bt Nikhil Kamat (2); Debashis Das (3) bt Shreyans Shah (2); Aditya Singh (2) lost to Saravana Krishnan (3); Swapnil Dhopade (3) bt Shiven Khosla (2); Santhosh Kumar (2) lost to Swayams Mishra (3); Bitan Banerjee (3) bt Sumant Subramanium (Mas) (2); Y. D.B. Madugalle (Sri) (3) bt N. Surendran (2); Aziz Sharify (Afg) (2.5) bt Lekh Mithawala (1.5); Kiranpal Singh Mahajan (2) drew with Atishay Ajmera (1.5).

Girls: Mary Ann Gomes (5) bt Padmini Rout (3.5); Atousa Pourkashiyan (Iri) (3) drew with Pon N Krithika (3); Soumya Swaminathan (2.5) lost to Kiran Manisha Mohanty ( 3.5); Kruttika Nadig (2.5) lost to P. Priya ( 3.5); Liza Shamima Akter (Ban) (2) lost to S. Harini (3.5); P. Sivasankari (3) bt P. Uthra (2); Mitali Patil (2) drew with J. Mohana Priya (1.5); Tara Rahimi (Iri) (2) drew with Bhakti Juikar ( 1.5); Sonakshi Rathore (0.5 ) lost to Y. G. Harika (1.5).

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