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Lanka Ravi Joins Suvrajit Saha In Lead
By Arvind Aaron
Press Officer
The oldest player of the previous National A at Visakhapatnam, Lanka Ravi of ONGC, Hyderabad
joined Suvrajit Saha of Eastern Railway in the lead with seven points from eigh rounds in the 44th National B at Ahmedabad on Sep 6. Lanka Ravi won the seventh round and drew the eighth with black against Saha.
Six players are tied for the third to eighth places with 6.5 points. It includes Valay Parikh (Guj), Dronavalli Harika (AP), Vikramaditya Kamble (Mah), Himanshu Sharma (Har), Prathamesh Mokal (BSB), Somak Palit (Ben). The event is happening at the Karnavati Club which had been the venue to other chess events in the past. India's first International Arbiter V.Kameswaran of Chennai is the Chief Arbiter. Saha drew twice and kept the top place though he shares it with L.Ravi. His winning rhythm is broken.
In the first half, the decisive games are played. In the second half, those at the top draw to qualify and those at the bottom draw as it does not matter any more. Yet R.R.Laxman's draw Eesha Karavade lasted 140 fighting moves! Kolkata's Somak Palit played the Scandinavian defence with the black pieces and won an exchange to down former National A champion P.Konguvel of ONGC, Chennai. Harika trapped the queen of Swapnil Dhopade to joint Somak Palit and others in the third place on 6.5 points. Other impressive winner of the eighth round was Valay Parikh who promoted his pawn to a knight to defeat two-time National B Champion Varugeese Koshy.
Round eight saw many of the Gujarat players sour in the points table. Nirav Rajasuba crushed Soumya Ranjan Mishra (Ori), Manthan Chokshi improved from an inferior opening to beat Preetham Sharma (TN). Point tally of Gujarat players are: Valay Parikh (6.5), Nirav and Manthan are on (5.5), Fenil Shah, S K Sinha and Sailesh Raval on (4.5), Manish Parmar, Hemal Thanki and Jalpan
Bhatt are on 4 points. Mukund Bhatt, Hardik Jha, Megh Patel, Ankit Rajpara, Manush Shah, Sukumar Menon,
Tushar Mehta and V N Makwana are on 3.5. While G S Mehta, Hardik Modi, A V Syamal Rao and Pradip Pandya are on 3 points.
Published on :
06.09.2006
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