National Chess Championship: Sethuraman nails Abhijeet, shares lead with Mitrabha Guha

Guha proved superior by riding on a two-pawn advantage in a minor-piece endgame against fifth seed N. R. Vishakh after 65 moves.

FILE PHOTO: S.P. Sethuraman in action. | Photo Credit: JOTHI RAMALINGAM B

S. P. Sethuraman played to his reputation of being the top seed and ended the unbeaten run of overnight leader Abhijeet Gupta by inflicting a 35-move defeat and shared the lead with Mitrabha Guha at 5.5 points from six rounds of the MPL National chess championship here on Tuesday.

Guha proved superior by riding on a two-pawn advantage in a minor-piece endgame against fifth seed N. R. Vishakh after 65 moves.

As things stand, following the leaders are four players - Abhijeet, M. R. Venkatesh, Aronyak Ghosh and Mehar Chinna Reddy - with five points each.

Aronyak settled for a quick 20-move draw with Koustav Chatterjee, following a three-fold repetition of moves.

Fourth seed Leon Mendonca ran into a determined Utkal Ranjan Sahoo, who played the endgame accurately to force a 92-move draw. N. B. Hari Madhavan, too, pulled off an impressive 132-move draw against GM P. Iniyan.

Leading results:

6th ROUND

S. P. Sethuraman (5.5) bt Abhijeet Gupta (5); Mitrabha Guha (5.5) bt N. R. Visakh (4.5); Koustav Chatterjee (4.5) drew with Aronyak Ghosh (5); Leon Mendonca (4.5) drew with Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (4); N. B. Hari Madhavan (4.5) drew with P. Iniyan (4.5); K. Ratnakaran (4) lost to M. R. Venkatesh (5); Garv Rai (4) lost to Mehar Chinna Reddy (5); Yash Bharadia (4.5) drew with Kushagra Mohan (4.5); Karthik Venkataraman (4.5) bt Dere Pushkar (4).

National Women’s Championship

Rating favourite Vantika Agrawal, defending champion Divya Deshmukh and former champions Mary Ann Gomes and Bhakti Kulkarni were among the 22 players who posted a second straight victory. They all share the lead after two rounds of the National women’s chess championship at Kolhapur on Tuesday.

Though most results on the leading boards produced predictable winners, Tamil Nadu’s C. N. M. Sanyukhtha upstaged ninth-seeded Karnataka girl Isha Sharma and Telangana’s V. Sarayu held TN’s M. Mahalakshmi

Leading results:

2nd ROUND

Vantika Agrawal (2) bt C. Lakshmi (1); Bhagyashree Patil (1) lost to Divya Deshmukh (1); Mitali Patil (1) lost to Mary Ann Gomes (2); Bhakti Kulkarni (2) bt Mrittika Mallick (1); V. Sarayu (1.5) drew with M. Mahalakshmi (1.5); Rucha Pujari (2) bt C. Femil (1); P. Surpreetha (1) lost to Sakshi Chitlange (2); Isha Sharma (1) lost to C. M. N. Sunyuktha (1); Bristy Mukherjee (2) bt Arpita Mukherjee (1); Srija Seshadri (2) bt Anjali Sagar (1); V. Rindhiya (1) lost to Aakanksha Hagawane (2); Srishti Pandey (2) bt Hajra Chandreyee (1); Samriddhaa Ghosh (1) lost to Nisha Mohota (2)..