GM Ramesh & IM Himanshu Sharma Share Lead

By Praful Zaveri

Former British Open Champion, R.B. Ramesh & IM Himanshu Sharma have propelled themselves to the top of the table and lead of the Parsvnath Commonwealth Chess Championship 2007 held today at Sirifort Sports Auditorium at the end of 4th round with as many points.

Amongst the 10-players on joint lead yesterday, only Ramesh and Himanshu managed to score victories while the remaining three games ended in a draw. The ensuing 5 th round encounter between these two players will decide whether one of them is able to take sole lead.

The game on the top table between Ram Prakash and IM-elect Ashwin Jayaram ended in a very interesting draw but only after a grueling 44 moves. The favourite, Ashwin found the going tough against Ram, who sacrificed his Queen for two Rooks on move 26. With this sacrifice Ram was able to get good compensation for his queen and had managed to put his Rooks in a commanding position. An upset appeared on the card but Ashwin salvaged a valuable half-point with perpetual checks.

On the 2nd Table, Ramesh, playing white, opted for rarely played Italian game at the top level chess against the highly experienced IM Mahmood Lodhi of Pakistan. In an equal middle game position, Lodhi played incorrectly to expose his King, which allowed Ramesh to create mating threats. Lodhi was forced to give up his queen to ward off the threats but the compensation was not enough and he had to surrender on move 51 in face of imminent defeat.

The 2nd decisive result on the top boards came on table 5 wherein Himanshu Sharma defeated Prasanjit Datta from the white side of the Ruy Lopez exchange variation – a rare line popularized by the legendary Bobby Fischer in the late seventies. Himanshu took advantage of the bad pawn structure and Bishop of Prasanjit to score a full point on 49 moves.

Top seeded S.S. Ganguly bounced back into the joint 2nd position by crushing Prathamesh Mokal in just 23 moves of the Sicilian Defense with a score of 3½. He has been joined by 15 other players, Jones Gawain, Parimarjan Negi, Al-Rakib, Reefat Sattar, Ashwin Jayram, S. Kidambi, Aleksandar Wohl, Arun Prasad, D.V. Prasad, V. Saravanan, Tania Sachdev, V. Kamble Prakash Ram, Roktim Bandopadhyay and K. Rathnakaran.

10-year old Vaibhav Suri continued his dream run by holding highly rated Ashwath to remain unbeaten so far while another Delhi youngster, Sahaj Grover forced GM Neelotpal Das to a draw. GM Barua also could not break the defense of young Arjun Tiwari and was happy to share the point.
 

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