PATNA: What a day it turned out to be in the Khadi India National chess championship! The ninth round witnessed some sensational results, one dramatic finish and more importantly, threw open the title-race.
The first defeat of second seed Aravindh Chithambaram, the overnight leader by one point, to a supremely-confident M.R. Lalith Babu meant the duo shared the lead at six points on Monday. Interestingly, with four rounds to go, there are no unbeaten players left in the 14-man field.
Defending champion M. Karthikeyan and S.L. Narayanan, seeded one and three, bounced back from Sunday’s defeat to share the third spot with Arghyadip Das (5.5 points).
Away from the front-runners, Deepan Chakkravarthy was busy making up for the hat-trick of defeats suffered last week. In a brilliant tactical-finish, Deepan sacrificed his queen as part of the sequence of moves that left Swapnil Dhopade dazed and defeated.
Though the fifth defeats for off-form Himanshu Sharma and Sammed Shete did not come as a surprise, S. Nitin’s first victory over Abhijit Kunte in five encounters was unexpected.
Among the five decisive outcomes, Lalith’s clinical dominance of Aravindh was very significant in the context of the title-race. Lalith was determined to offset the loss suffered to Karthikeyan and Monday’s victory could not come against a better rival.
“Probably, if I had not beaten him today, Aravindh could have well slipped away (to win the title),” said Lalith following the 46-move triumph in Grunfeld Defence, something that Aravindh opted for the first time.
Lalith felt that Aravindh was not well-versed with the lines of Grunfeld and underestimated the potential of white’s queen move on the seventh turn. Out of their preparations, the players were soon struggling to find the precise continuation.
Once Aravindh lost a pawn, Lalith held the upper hand but missed a shorter way to victory. “Somehow I was very confident of winning today but how it came about on the board was quite different from what I had prepared for,” said Lalith, aiming to win a title “in a long time”.
The results:
Ninth round: M. R. Lalith Babu (6) bt Aravindh Chithambaram (6) in 46 moves; Himanshu Sharma (2) lost to M. Karthikeyan (5.5) in 64 moves; Debashis Das (4.5) drew with Arghyadip Das (5.5) in 26 moves; Deepan Chakkravarthy (4.5) bt Swapnil Dhopade (4) in 41 moves; S.L. Narayanan (5.5) bt Sammed Shete (2.5) in 60 moves; S. Nitin (5) bt Abhijit Kunte (3.5) in 33 moves; P. Shyaam Nikhil (4) drew with R.R. Laxman (4.5) in 26 moves.
10th-round pairings: Aravindh v Nitin; Sammed v Lalith; Karthikeyan v Debashis; Swapnil v Arghyadip; Deepan v Narayanan; Kunte v Shyaam; Laxman v Himanshu.