Sravyasree stuns GM Vignesh at the 62nd National Chess Championship

Andhra’s Sravyasree Bheemarasetty shocked GM N.R. Vignesh with a brilliant win in the Ruy Lopez game at the 62nd National Chess Championship. Meanwhile, GM Sasikiran, GM Abhijeet Gupta, and others continue to lead after round seven in Guntur

Hyderabad: With the top six boards producing no decisive result, the lead remained the same, with the quartet of GM Sasikiran and GM Abhijeet Gupta of PSPB, IM Aronyak Ghosh of Railways, and IM-elect Ajay Santhosh Parvathareddy continuing to lead, scoring six points each at the end of the seventh round of the 62nd National Chess Championship, organized by the Andhra Chess Association at Vignan University (Guntur) on Sunday.

Three more players—GM Deep Sengupta of PSPB, IM Ayush Sharma of Railways, and IM Harsh Suresh of Tamil Nadu—joined the leaders with their victories.

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Railway GM N.R. Vignesh was upset by Andhra’s Sravyasree Bheemarasetty in a Ruy Lopez game. Enjoying a slight advantage, Vignesh fumbled and misplayed his queen, changing the complexity of the game. Vignesh did not hesitate to resign immediately.

Sasikiran declined the Queen’s Gambit by Abhijeet, and despite having a triplet of pawns on the g-file, Sasikiran had no problem sharing the point after thirty-one moves. Both Aronyak and Ajay hesitated to venture and take risks in an English opening.

There was a threefold repetition by move 20, and they agreed to a draw. In a similar manner, top seed P. Iniyan of Tamil Nadu and Kerala’s young IM H. Goutham Krishna repeated the moves to agree to a draw on the third board.

GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly played the Caro-Kann defence against Maharashtra’s Kashish Manoj Jain. In a closed position, Ganguly’s uncastled king had a casual walk to the other corner, and the game ended in a draw.

In the first decisive game among the top boards, GM Deep Sengupta employed the French Defence against Railways IM Sidhant Mohapatra. Deep exchanged queens on the 14th move itself, denying the castling privilege to Sidhant. Sidhant had to lose his knight to stop the promotion of Deep’s powerful central pawn, and Deep wrapped up the game in forty-eight moves.

After beating an international master in the previous round, former Tamil Nadu champion N. Surendran went one step further, beating GM Prraneeth Vuppala of Telangana in his Sicilian Defence.

In the middle game, Prraneeth played some good moves, sacrificing his queen for the opponent’s rook and bishop, but maintained parity a few moves later. When Prraneeth erred by picking up a pawn unnecessarily, Surendran offered to sacrifice his rook to promote a pawn to a queen. The GM resigned when Surendran’s extra pawn helped him reach an unenviable position