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Short Regains Commonwealth Title
By Arvind Aaron
Nigel Short of England won the Commonwealth Chess Championship after
scoring a final round victory over Arun Prasad of Bharat Petroleum, Salem
to regain his title on 9.5/11 at Nagpur on October 6. Visibly upset after
the penultimate round to hear that the final round will be played at 9
a.m. and not 10 a.m., Short needed a win for the title with the black
pieces and he did what was required of him. Starting as the top seed,
Short slipped to 3.5/5 after losing to Rahul Sangma but scored wins in the
last six rounds to win the title he last won in 2006 at Mumbai. Last year
it was held at Delhi. GM R.B. Ramesh of Chennai
who had won the title in 2007 did not participate this year.
Second seed Surya S Ganguly of Indian Oil, Kolkata finished second after
scoring a quick win over team-mate GM Abhijit Kunte of Pune with the white
pieces. He finished on nine points for clear second place. Tenth seed
Enamul Hossain of Bangladesh took the third place on 8.5 points. Sadly, no
GM norms were made this time.
Notable performances came from Vidit Gujrathi of Nasik, Maharashtra.
"These young boys are playing so well," noted Niaz Murshed the first
grandmaster from the Indian Sub-Continent. Seed 46, Vidit won a thrilling
encounter to finish seventh. He had been trained by GM Alon Greenfeld of
Israel. Naturally Vidit made an IM norm with 8/11.
T. Purushothaman, 20, a final year B.Com student from Guntur in Andhra
Pradesh completed his second IM norm of ten games. He has a first norm of
nine games from the Asian Junior, Mumbai 2007. Others making IM norms
were: K. Priyadarshan (7.5/11) of Madurai, Akshat Khamparia (6.5/9) of
Indore, Matta Vinay Kumar (5.5/9) of Hyderabad, Rahul Sangma (6.5/9) of
Delhi. The lone girl to make a WIM norm was J. Mohana Priya (6.5/11) of
Chennai.
Plenty of IM norms were made in this edition. Though most of them were
subject to approval of FIDE. The event did not have some technical numbers
required for the titles to be awarded and some players made norms with a
mild degree of anxiety. The closest someone came to the GM norm was B.T.
Muralikrishnan of Southern Railway, Madurai and he failed in the end.
"Double rounds and tiredness were the reason," said Muralikrishnan.
The sponsor was Nagpur Municipality Corporation and it was organised by
the Nagpur District Chess Association in a grand manner. Many players
liked the organisation for many things and one was the Naivedhyam
Celebration Centre, the airconditioned venue which had plenty of
volunteers to attend. The arbiters team headed by IA Moreshwar Bhagwat did
an excellent work. The website site
www.commonwealth-chess.com
had a nice logo coined perfectly for the orange city with results and
games in PGN as well as many live games. Pakistan's M.Lodhi compares this
as the equal best he played in India. The other one was in Rajasthan, he
noted.
This tournament was held at a great time said eleven time Sri Lankan
women's champion Vineetha Wijesuriya who added it was a good training
event for the Dresden Olympiad. She is preparing to migrate to Australia
soon from Sri Lanka. Overall 260-players from eight nations took part. Had
more nations come, the joy of the hosts would have been greater.
The opening ceremony was different at a water theme park and "very nice"
said IM Suvrajit Saha of Eastern Railway, Kolkata. Those who brought rice
cookers had a tough time as they had to brave abnormal power problems at
the MLA's Hostel which was one of the staying accommodations provided.
"The power cut was from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and another from 2 p.m. to 7
p.m. and the second cut did not hurt us as we were playing chess then,
said C. Praveen Kumar from Chennai.
Cash prizes totalling USD 25,000 were distributed by a galaxy of
dignitories. Gold, silver, bronze medals were also distributed. The
Mayor's Cup went to Nigel Short. Short was born on June 1, 1965 and had
played for the World Title and lost to Garry Kasparov in 1993. He is a
farmer in Greece since that match and plays about five events each year.
Short lost to Sangma, drew Shashikant Kutwal and beat the rest.
Final placings (top 20): 1. GM Nigel Short (Eng) 9.5/11, 2. GM S.S.
Ganguly (Ind) 9, 3. GM Enamul Hossain (Ban) 8.5, 4-15. IM Arun Prasad (Ind),
IM M.R. Venkatesh (Ind), IM Gogineni Rohith (Ind), FM Vidit Gujrathi (Ind),
GM Parimarjan Negi (Ind), IM R.R. Laxman (Ind), IM Deep Sengupta (Ind), GM
Deepan Chakkravarthy (Ind), IM P.D.S. Girinath (Ind), GM P. Magesh
Chandran (Ind), GM Ziaur Rahman (Ban), GM Neelotpal Das (Ind) 8 each,
16-27. B.T. Muralikrishnan (Ind), FM K. Priyadarshan (Ind), GM Abhijit
Kunte (Ind), GM Dibyendu Barua (Ind), IM Ashwin Jayaram (Ind), GM Abhijeet
Gupta (Ind), IM Saptarshi Roy (Ind), IM D.P.Singh (Ind), M.S. Thejkumar (Ind),
IM Lanka Ravi (Ind), Tejas Ravichandran (Ind), IM Himanshu Sharma (Ind)
7.5 each...260 players.
Women: 1 WGM S. Meenakshi (Ind, gold), 2. WIM Kiran Mohanty (Ind, silver),
3. WGM Eesha Karavade (Ind, bronze) all 7/11 each.
Home Published
on 06th October, 2008
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