JOIN US A fuming Koneru Humpy was timed out after she protested to the officials about the miscommunication over the timing rules in the fourth round match of the Commonwealth Chess Championship here on Thursday.
"This is no way to conduct the tournament, it is the organiser's fault for not announcing the rules properly," said second-seeded Humpy.
The controversy erupted after Humpy in her fourth round game against Himanshu Sharma was stopped as officials declared her timed-out.
Later she lodged an official written complaint to the organising committee and withdrew from the tournament.
The five member appeals committee, however, announced that the match result stands and Humpy must have checked with the officials if she felt the announcement was ambiguous.
Ziaur Rahman (Bangla-desh), Lodhi Mahmood (Pakistan), Phiri Richmond (Zambia), Van Der Nat Nicholas (South Africa and L. Chevannes Sabrina (England) deliberated for over an hour and also heard Koneru Humpy's grievance. They adjudicated that: "Official result stands, there was no transgression of the FIDE rules on the part of the organisers."
However, the committee did advise the officials to display the rules and regulations in a much improved way and also said that the arbiter's announcement must be clear and without any discrepancies after it came to their notice that many players had voiced their concern over the time control announcement.
Meanwhile, top seeded Abhijeet Gupta, playing black, was stretched in a 55 move game but eventually won against K Ramnath Bhuvanesh.
Results Round-4 (Indians otherwise stated): Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (4), Koneru Humpy (3) lost to Himanshu Sharma (4), Visakh NR (3.5) drew Deep Sengupta (3.5), Lalith Babu MR (4) bt Vignesh NR (3), Sahaj Grover (4) bt Nitin S (3), Karthikeyan Murali (4) bt Van Der Nat Nicholas (3), Harsha Bharathakoti (3.5) drew Abhijit Kunte (3.5), Sanjay N (3.5) drew Ankit R Rajpara (3.5), Dhulipala Bala Chandra Prasad (3) lost to Arghyadip Das (4), Niaz Murshed (BAN) (4) bt Saurabh Anand (3), Athul Krishna S (3.5) drew Aravindh Chithambaram (3), Mehar Chinna Reddy (2.5) lost to Ziaur Rahman (BAN) (3.5), Deepan Chakkaravarthy (3.5) bt Richmond Phiri (ZAM) (2.5).