Sethuraman surges to lead

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Former Under 16 world champion S. P. Sethuraman of Tamil Nadu emerged sole leader with four points in as many rounds of the 49th national premier chess championship organised by Marathwada Chess Association at the MIT campus, Aurangabad.

Former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta of PSPB follows him with 3.5 points. Twice Asian Junior champion Aswin Jayaram of Tamil Nadu adopted the most followed Meran variation of Slav defence against Sethuraman. Sethu’s d- and e- pawns were guarding the key squares well and Aswin had to expose his castled king to dismantle the connected pawns.

With f6 pawn supporting the seventh rank rook, Sethu obtained a superior position forcing Aswin to resign on 40th move.

In the Samisch variation of Nimzo Indian defence followed by Vidit Santosh Gujrati of Maharashtra, Abhijeet Gupta opened his queen side for an attack. He combined his bishop and queen well threatening a checkmate in 40 moves.

In the game of the day, former world under 10 bronze medalist MR Venkatesh of PSPB outwitted Vikramaditya Kulkarni of Railways by sacrificing his rook for a knight on 21st move and again giving away his knight in the very next move. The fruitful sacrifices enabled Venkatesh to grab the opponent’s queen and the game.

Results (fourth round): S.P. Sethuraman (TN, 4) bt Ashwin Jayaram (TN, 3), Gupta Abhijeet (PSPB, 3.5) bt Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (Mah, 2.5), Bakre Tejas (IA, 3) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy (TN, 3), Neelotpal Das (PSPB, 2) lost to G.N. Gopal (PSPB, 3), Sengupta Deep (WB, 2.5) drew with Shyam Sundar (TN, 2.5), R.R. Laxman (Rly, 2.5) drew with B. Adhiban (PSPB, 2.5), Swapnil S. Dhopade (Rly, 2.5) drew with Kunte Abhijit (PSPB, 2.5), Arun Prasad (PSPB, 2.5) drew with Satyapragyan Swayangsu (IA, 2.5), Sriram Jha (LIC, 2.5) drew with Lalith Babu (PSPB, 2.5), Venkatesh (PSPB, 3) bt Kulkarni Vikramaditya (Rly, 2), Koshy Varugeese (PSPB, 3) bt Himanshu Sharma (har, 1.5), Shyam Nikil (TN, 2) drew with Negi Parimarjan (PSPB, 2), Udeshi Aditya (Mah, 1.5) lost to Sundararajan Kidambi (PSPB, 2.5), Thipsay Praveen (Mah, 2) drew with Ghosh Diptayan (WB, 2).