Karthikeyan Destined Winner
By Arvind Aaron

Chennai schoolboy P.Karthikeyan won the 1st Thrissur International FIDE Rating Tournament that took place from April 15-20 in the cultural capital of Kerala.

In many ways Karthikeyan was destined to win, since though he offered draws, his opponents did not take them. They lost and paved the way for his splendid triumph. In the final round, he upset IM Saptarshi Roy of Kolkata to win the tourney with 8.5 points. The tournament was dominated by Ram S Krishnan, a former University of Madras player who led until the eighth round. Ram's defeat to Saptarshi Roy in the ninth round opened up the event. In the final round, Chennai players won the top four places with Ram playing a draw against B.S.Sivanandan and Konguvel taking the third place by defeating Kerala's second IM K.Ratnakaran.

Chennai players dominating the podium in Kerala is not new. In the previous Cusat FIDE Rating event at Kochi, three different Chennai players took the top three places. The younger brigade of Chennai players is certainly making its presence across India. This time they took the top four places.

The first edition of this event was announced four months prior and it benefited with a huge response of 214 players from all over India and also from Arunachal Pradesh. And a good 109 of them were rated. This was Thrissur's first FIDE Rating event. Dusthageer Ibrahim, the teenaged Madurai boy shocked top seed IM Saptarshi Roy in the fourth round. Dusthageer had won the SPIC FIDE Rated Tournament in Tuticorin last year and many would remember it.

Sreekumar, President of the Thrissur Jilla Panchayath distributed the prizes in the closing ceremony while K.Radhakrishnan, Hon. Speaker of the Kerala Assembly inaugurated the tournament. The show was organised by N.V.Balagopalan, Secretary, Chess Association of Thrissur with the help of various people including T.J.Suresh Kumar of ICF, Chennai. In the opening ceremony, the founder Secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association, 83-year old A.V.Sriramulu was given a memento. He was one of the players and also travelled to Thrissur by an unreserved compartment in the train.

Final placings: 1 P.Karthikeyan 8.5/10, 2-4 Ram S Krishnan, P.Konguvel, Preetham Sharma 8 each, 5-8 B.S.Sivanandan, Saptarshi Roy, K.Priyadarshan, M.B.Muralidharan 7.5 each, 9-24 K.Ratnakaran, Anurag Jaiswal, Dusthageer Ibrahim, R.R.Laxman, Syed Anwar Shazuli, A.Sankar, E.P.Nirmal, T.J.Suresh Kumar, Alex Thomas, Nimmy George, Joydeep Dutta, Rupankar Nath, M.Paramasivam, P.K.Suresh, P.Gopalakrishna, A.K.Jagadeesh 7 each.

 

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Published on 30th  April, 2007