Sasikiran outwits Deep Sengupta at National Chess Championship
In a Ruy Lopez game, Sasikiran destroyed Deep’s pawn structure on the queen's side to gain an advantageous position
Hyderabad: Four-time champion Sasikiran Krishnan of PSPB outwitted his teammate Deep Sengupta and another teammate Abhijeet Gupta got the better of IM elect Ajay Santhosh Parvathareddy of U.P to share the lead with seven points each at the end of the eighth round of the 62nd National Chess Championship, organised by Andhra Chess Association at Vignan University (Guntur) on Monday.
Six players, comprising two GMs, P Iniyan of Tamil Nadu and J Deepan Chakkravarthy of Railways and four IMs are half a point behind.
In a Ruy Lopez game, Sasikiran destroyed Deep’s pawn structure on the queen’s side to gain an advantageous position. In the queen and minor piece ending, with equal pawns, Deep himself helped Sasi to convert the winning advantage into a winning position by a wrong queen check. Deep resigned when the checkmate or loss of the queen was unavoidable.
In a balanced game of King’s Indian Defence by five-time Commonwealth champion Abhijeet Gupta against Ajay, a relentless attack by the former helped him to clinch a win in sixty-eight moves in arook and minor piece ending.
Top-seed P Iniyan of Tamil Nadu, winner of the Chennai Open 2024, was in his element against his teammate IM Harsh Suresh. Playing the Canal attack of the Sicilian Defence.
After four wins in the first four rounds, second-seeded Surya Sekhar Ganguly of PSPB could not carry the momentum and settled for his fourth consecutive draw, the last one against the international master S Nitin of Railways in this round in the Ruy Lopez opening.
International master Aaditya Dingra continued his good nick to upset Andhra’s GM M.R. Lalith Babu of PSPB. Lalith had to lose his rook for a knight to stop the threatening attacks by Aaditya. Lalit resigned after forty eight moves in an inferior position.
GM J. Deepan Chakkravarthy of Railways steadily advanced in the standings to be behind the leader, with a comfortable win over Ayaan Garg of Chhattisgarh in a QGD Defence by the latter. Ayaan was overambitious with his knight in the knight and pawn ending, only to get it trapped.
Two-time World rapid champion Koneru Humpy was the guest of honour for today’s round and witnessed some ongoing games.
