National Chess C’ships: Day of surprises throws up four leaders; Sethuraman, Abhijeet, Mitrabha stunned

l With two rounds to go, Karthik Venkataraman, Aronyak Ghosh and N. B. Hari Madhavan were the surprise front-runners with overnight co-leader Koustav Chatterjee at 8.5 points.

Published : Jan 01, 2023 19:30 IST , NEW DELHI

Joint overnight leader Abhijeet Gupta (in pic), top seed S. P. Sethuraman and rising star Mitrabha Guha suffered stunning losses to the new leaders
Joint overnight leader Abhijeet Gupta (in pic), top seed S. P. Sethuraman and rising star Mitrabha Guha suffered stunning losses to the new leaders | Photo Credit: Velankanni Raj B/ The Hindu
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Joint overnight leader Abhijeet Gupta (in pic), top seed S. P. Sethuraman and rising star Mitrabha Guha suffered stunning losses to the new leaders | Photo Credit: Velankanni Raj B/ The Hindu

Unexpected winners from three out of the top four boards in the 11th round of the MPL National chess championship turned the title race on its head on Sunday.

With two rounds to go, Karthik Venkataraman, Aronyak Ghosh and N. B. Hari Madhavan were the surprise front-runners, with overnight co-leader Koustav Chatterjee at 8.5 points.

Joint overnight leader Abhijeet Gupta, top seed S. P. Sethuraman and rising star Mitrabha Guha suffered stunning losses to the new leaders while Koustav was extremely lucky to escape with a draw against S. L. Srihari on the second board.

Abhijeet, firmly on a comeback trail after making amends for two successive defeats, suffered a third loss from the threshold of victory.

Facing Karthik, Abhijeet gained a pawn early and held a good position. Karthik did well to regain the lost ground, but in an oversight, delivered a queen-check without realising that the queen could be captured by Abhijeet’s rook.

On his part, Abhijeet overlooked the simple capture and moved his king out of check. Karthik promptly grabbed Abhijeet’s rooks off successive moves to force resignation.

Facing Aronyak, Sethuraman resigned on the 50th move when he found no way of saving a bishop.

N. B. Hari Madhavan tormented Mitrabha for the better part of 60 moves before the Bengal player gave up.

Leading results
11th round: Abhijeet Gupta (8) lost to Karthik Venkataraman (8.5); L.R. Srihari (8) drew with Koustav Chatterjee (8.5); Aronyak Ghosh (8.5) bt S. P. Sethuraman (7.5); Mitrabha Guha (7.5) lost to N. B. Hari Madhavan (8.5); N. R. Visakh (8) bt Deep Sengupta (7); P. Shyaamnikhil (7.5) drew with Mehar Chinna Reddy (7.5); Sayantan Das (8) bt Ajay Krishna (7); Deepan Chakkravarthy (8) bt M. R. Venkatesh (7); Soman Kamotra (7) drew with Leon Mendonca (7); S. Nitin (7.5) bt M. Shyam Sundar (6.5); P. Iniyan (7.5) bt P. Karthikeyan (6.5).
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