G B Prakash maintains sole lead
Grandmaster norm holder G B Prakash of Indian Bank maintained his excellent form to
beat N Sanjay of Karnataka in the eighth round of the 5th
Global Trust Bank International Rating chess tournament in Hyderabad on Tuesday.
Prakash leads the 362-player field with 7.5 points and is
followed by IMs Ravi Hegde of Union Bank and Anup Deshmukh of
LIC and IM norm holder Jayant Gokhale of Bharat Petroleum all
of whom have 7 points.
Prakash played the Slav defence and a rather offbeat
choice by Sanjay transposed the game to a harmless variation
of the Queens Gambit Accepted.
Prakash was well-armed and showed his in-depth opening
preparation to get a balanced position in the middlegame.
Sanjay made an error by trading the queens and Prakash got a
slight advantage thanks to his better pawn structure.
The timing was important thereafter and Prakash slowly
squeezed out the defensive resources of Sanjay to craft a fine
victory.
Anup got the better of his LIC counterpart Atanu Lahiri
in the Advance variation of the French defence. Playing white
Anup got a miniscule advantage after the opening and went for
an attack against the King after Atanu opted for giving up his
right to castle.
The middlegame took an exciting turn as Atanu started
making headway on the queenside while Anup increased his
pressure on the other flank. In the end Anup's exploits proved
tougher than Atanu's anticipation.
Jayant Gokahle was at his attacking best against Tamil
Nadu youngster M R Venkatesh in an English opening game with
white pieces.
Venkatesh employed a set-up akin to the Queen's Indian
defence and never looked at ease once Jayant got a firm
control in the center. Venkatesh burnt his own bridge as he
went for tactical complications that involved the sacrifice of
two pawns in the center.
Jayant thwarted the attempts with his ice-cool chess and
registered an emphatic victory.
International Master P Konguvel of ONGC came back into
contention for top honours with a hard-earned victory over
International Women Master Anupama Gokhale of Bharat
Petroleum.
In the Grunfeld Indian defence where Konguvel was black,
Anupama played actively and the position became extremely
complicated in the middlegame.
Konguvel too took the bull by its horns and launched an
attack along the central files that helped him to exert
pressure on white's kingside weaknesses. Anupama succumbed to
the pressure in time scramble
Tamil Nadu's Poobesh Anand defeated Hari Om Sharma of UP
to Join Konguvel along with five others on 6.5 points. In an
irregular opening Poobesh tactically outplayed Hari in the
Queenless middlegame.
Ravi Hegde scored a fluent victory over M Y Raju of
Andhra Pradesh while erstwhile joint leader Y Kalyan Kumar
(AP) suffered his second successive loss in the tournament,
going down to IM Sekhar Sahu of Union Bank.