Virender Negi shocks Tania Sachdev

Tania Sachdev’s poor time-management took its toll in a winning position as she overlooked the loss of a bishop and crashed to a stunning 47-move loss against her team manager in Air India and veteran player Virender Negi in the opening round of the Commonwealth chess championship on Tuesday.

Tania Sachdev, who consumed nearly 100 minutes to make the first 19 moves of the Neo Catalan game, played the remaining moves virtually on the 30-second increment that comes with every move made.

Tania Sachdev’s poor time-management took its toll in a winning position as she overlooked the loss of a bishop and crashed to a stunning 47-move loss against her team manager in Air India and veteran player Virender Negi in the opening round of the Commonwealth chess championship here on Tuesday.

The former Asian women champion, who consumed nearly 100 minutes to make the first 19 moves of the Neo Catalan game, played the remaining moves virtually on the 30-second increment that comes with every move made.

Eventually, the pressure from the clock had the final say. Tania allowed a ‘knight-fork’ that threatened her queen and bishop, assuming that she could win back the minor piece. But in doing so, she overlooked the threat of a back-rank checkmate.

She chose not to continue with the knight-deficit and resigned immediately.

The round’s only other unexpected result also involved Tania’s teammate Tejas Bakre. The Grandmaster, rated 2439, was held in 32 moves by South Africa’s Aron Klevansky, who played way above his rating 1899 to snatch half a point.

All other results on the leading boards produced expected winners, with top seed and former champion Deep Sengupta showing the way with an expected victory over Naipal Hoolan of Mauritius.

Leading results (Indians unless stated)

First round: Naipal Hoolan (Mri) lost to Deep Sengupta; Vaibhav Suri bt Vinay Abraham; Divya Lakshmi lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy; M. R. Lalit Babu bt Joy Shah; Karan Trivedi lost to Vishnu Prasanna; Debashis Das bt Paul Gluckman (RSA); Ansuman Samal lost to Swapnil Dhopade; M. S. Thej Kumar bt Rani Hamid (Ban); Y. Saranya lost to Abhijit Kunte; V. Karthik bt Bhagyashree Patil; Saurabh Chaubey lost to N. R. Visakh.