JOIN USThejkumar keeps his lead intact
Southern Railways’ International Master Rathnakaran is in the second place with 7.5 pts.
Stany chose an advance variation and had good control over key squares. Stany lost a pawn in the 42nd move but compensated with his Rook and Bishop moving towards the Thej’s king. In mutual time scramble Thejkumar played out the Rook and pawn ending better to notch the point in 60 moves.
Rathnakaran applied the Rossolimo attack against the Sicilian variation against Sanjay N of Karnataka, who played as black. Sanjay was in acute time pressure in the middle game and had to concede the exchange around 25th move. Rathnakaran pocketed a point in 34 moves.
In another match International Master BT Muralikrishnan of Southern Railways playing black side faced the b3 variation of the French defense from Shivananda of Karnataka. A 22nd move lapse from Muralikrishnan helped Shivananda conduct the endgame of Rook and Bishop against Rook and Knight, to force a perpetual draw by Muralikrishna. The game ended in 48 moves.
DH News Service
Results (round nine): Stany GA (Kar, 7) lt to Thejkumar MS (SWR, 8.5); Rathnakaran K (SR, 7.5) bt Sanjay N (Kar, 7); Tilak Sharad S (Mah, 7) drew Roy Chowdhury Saptarshi (WB, 7); Shivananda BS (Kar, 6.5) drew Murali Krishnan BT (SR, 7); Thipsay Praveen M (Mah, 7) bt Arvind Shastry (Kar, 6); Praveen Kumar C (TN, 7) bt Nirmal EP (Ker, 6); Babu N Sudhakar (TN, 6.5) drew Kaushik S (TN, 6.5); Ramnathan Balasubramaniam (ICF, 7) bt Vijay Keerthi K (Kar, 6); G Akash (TN, 6.5) drew Syed Anwar Shazuli (ICF, 6.5); Koshy Varugeese (TN, 6.5) drew Mithil Ajgaonkar (Mah, 6.5); Navalgund Niranjan (Kar, 7) bt Shetty Rahul (Mah, 6); Dave Kantilal (Raj, 6.5) drew Phoobalan P (ICF, 6.5); Amrutha Mokal (Mah, 6) drew Laxman RR (ICF, 6); Kranthi Kumar B (AP, 5.5) lt to Meenakshi Subbaraman (IA, 6.5); Debashish Dutta (Asm, 5.5) lt to Deshmukh Anup (Mah, 6); Gopalkrishna P (Kar, 5.5) lt to Anilkumar OT (Ker, 6.5); Gavi Siddayya (Kar, 6) drew Linda Rangarajan (Pud, 6); Leuva Pruthviraj (Guj, 5.5) lt to Srikanth Ajay (TN, 6.5); Thanki Hemal Karsanji (Guj, 5.5) lt to Vikram Saralaya (Kar, 6.5); Sharma Dinesh K (LIC, 6) bt Atul Kumar (J&K, 5); Saravana Krishnan P (TN, 6) bt Roop Saurav (Bih, 5); Santoshkashyap HG (Kar, 5) lt to FM Srinivasa Rao M (AP, 6); Phadke Sohan (Mah, 5.5) drew Sameer Ghotane (Kar, 5.5); Gahan MG (Kar, 6) bt Jathin Bhupendrabhai Par (Guj, 5); Hegde Ravi Gopal (Kar, 6) bt Benadikar Shashank D (Kar, 5).