All-India chess tourney: Pune’s Gaurav loses his ground; slips to 7th place
At the tournament being held at Ganesh Kala Krida Hall, Swargate, Gaurav went down to Kolkata’s Grand Master (GM) Saptarshi Roy, who reached the top of the leader board with a clear lead of half a point over the rest of the players in the morning session.
City player Gaurav Zagade, who had emerged as the sole leader at the end of the sixth round, failed to keep the momentum and slipped down to the seventh position at the end of ninth round of the Late Bharatbai Halkude Memorial first all-India open Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) rating chess tournament, on Wednesday.
At the tournament being held at Ganesh Kala Krida Hall, Swargate, Gaurav went down to Kolkata’s Grand Master (GM) Saptarshi Roy, who reached the top of the leader board with a clear lead of half a point over the rest of the players in the morning session.
The game started with a Catalan opening and Saptarshi, playing with black pieces, started attacking Gaurav’s queen side from the 15th move. Gaurav, on the other hand, was defensive and was looking for a draw. He even offered a proposal for draw in the 20th move, but Saptarshi refused. In the 26th move, Saptarshi made a brilliant attack, sacrificing his knight. Finally, Gaurav realised that his attempts to save the game were fragile and resigned after 32 moves.
However, Saptarshi couldn’t enjoy his lead as in the evening session, he drew with International Master (IM) Vikramaditya Kulkarni. At the end of the ninth round, three players are now jointly at the top place. Along with Saptarshi, IM Rajesh VAV and Pune’s Soham Phadke are leading with eight points each.
Results
8th round: Gaurav Zagade (6½) lost to GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (7.5); IM Vikramaditya Kulkarni (7) bt IM Ravi Hegde (6); IM Shashikant Kutwal (6) lost to IM Rajesh VAV (7); FM Gajwa Ankit (6.5) drew with Vedant Pimpalkhare (6.5); Pratik Patil (7) bt AIM Komal Srivatsav Sajja (6); Deota Snehil S (6) lost to FM Phadke Sohan (7); Prakash Ram (6.5) drew with Swaraj Palit (6.5); Shelke Sankarsha (6) lost to IM Ramnathan Balasubramaniam (6.5); Jain Kashish (6.5) bt FM Joshi S G (5.5); Gaikwad Siddhant (6.5) bt Aswin PG (5.5); Kiran Panditrao (6.5) bt Pate Machindra (5.5); Rahul Bharadwaj B (5.5) lost to Nagare Akhilesh (6.5); Nair Sanjeev (6.5) bt Lund Rachit (5.5); Gaurav Das (6) drew with Tanvi Hadkonkar (6); Sathya Naarayanan S (6.5) bt Kulkarni Saurabh (5.5)
