New Delhi: Top seeded Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta scored a quick and crushing victory over K Praneeth Surya in the third round of Commonwealth Chess Championship being played at the Park Plaza hotel here.
Playing the white side of a King’s Indian defense, Gupta employed his pet Saemisch variation and Surya fell prey to a recently popular variation in the middle game. Abhijeet got a strong king side attack and crashed through the King side with his queen, knight and rook. When the game ended Gupta had 83 minutes still remaining on his clock indicating that the preparation was quite deep.
Grandmaster Koneru Humpy also maintained her winning run in the tournament outclassing SK Nasir Ahmed of Bangladesh. Playing black, Humpy sensed an advantage in the middle game and even though she had to work little harder, the victory was always within grasp.
Also ending the quickly was Grandmaster Sahaj Grover who accounted for Delhi city-mate Hemant Sharma from the black side of a French defense. It was an exchange variation by Sharma that gave Grover a nice middle game advantage and a spectacular Bishop sacrifice did the trick for the young Grandmaster.
In a notable upset in the third round, young Saurabh Anand defeated Pakistan’s International Master Mahmood Lodhi displaying his calculating prowess. Lodhi was upstaged in the middle game when he lost his queen. It may be recalled that in the second round, Saurabh Anand had beaten S Vijayalakshmi.
Important Results Round-3 (Indians otherwise specified):-
GM Abhijeet Gupta (3) beat FM Praneeth Surya K (2); FM Sk Nasir Ahmed of Bangladesh (2) lost to GM Koneru Humpy (3); GM Deep Sengupta (3) beat Sai Vishwesh C (2); FM Raghunandan K S (2) lost to GM Lalith Babu M R (3); Hemant Sharma (2) lost to GM Sahaj Grover (3); GM Aravindh Chithambaram (2.5) drew with Krishna Teja N (2.5); Niranjan Navalgund (2) lost to GM Karthikeyan Murali (3); GM Abhijit Kunte (3) beat WFM Vaishali R (2); FM Matta Vinay Kumar (2.5) drew with IM Narayanan S L (2.5); GM Ankit R Rajpara (3) beat Dhananjay (2); IM Arghyadip Das (3) beat Michelle Catherina (2); Ajay Krishna S (2) lost to GM Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh (3); IM Saptarshi Roy (2.5) drew with WIM Ivana Maria Furtado (2.5); IM Himanshu Sharma (3) beat Srinath Rao S V (2); Kumar Gaurav (2) lost to IM Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3).
Round-2 : Rakesh Gurung lost to Abhijeet Gupta; K. Humpy bt Pratik Patil; Chandrasish Majumdar lost to Deep Sengupta; M.R. Lalith Babu bt Kiran Manisha Mohanty; N. Lokesh w/o Vaibhav Suri; Sahaj Grover bt G.K. Monnisha; A. Muthaiah lost to Aravindh Chithambaram; M. Karthikeyan bt Vipul Subhashi; Deepak Katiyar drew with Ziaur Rahman; Deepan Chakkravarty drew with R. Ganesh; Rakesh Kumar Nayak lost to Abhijit Kunte; S.L. Narayanan bt J. Saranya; Pratyusha Bodda lost to Ankit Rajpara; Siva Mahadevan lost to Arghyadip Das; Niaz Murshed bt Dhanabir Singh .
