Anwar, Joshi lead the pack

Vijayawada, March 8: Second seed Syed Anwar Shazuli (TN) and Manish Joshi (MP) emerged leaders with four points at the end of the fourth r...

Vijayawada, March 8: Second seed Syed Anwar Shazuli (TN) and Manish Joshi (MP) emerged leaders with four points at the end of the fourth round of the ninth Andhra Gymkhana National Youth (under-25) chess tournament on Wednesday.

Following the leaders are International Master-elect Dinesh Kumar Sharma (LIC) and UP’s Ajay Pande with 3.5 points each.

On top table, Syed Anwar, playing whites, resorted to D4 against J Ramakrishna (AP), who replied with Nf6 in Trampovisky defence. Anwar dominated the middle game, forcing Ramakrishna to resign on the 40th move as he was down by five pawns.

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Manish Joshi (UP) prevailed over Gunasekharan (TN) in Reti opening closed variation. At the 18th move (C5), Joshi got the initiative. Gunasekharan’s 30th move was dubious one, enabling Joshi to bounce back, thus forcing Gunasekharan to surrender at the 44th move.

Dinesh Kumar Sharma, with black pieces, outplayed Pranjal Das (WB) in Ruy Lopez exchange variation while T Nagar Chess Academy’s Prassanna and Venus Chess Academy’s Pankaj Joshi agreed for a draw.

The day also witnessed two upsets as unrated Ajay Pande defeated Fide-rated G Dinesh Kumar. In another upset, under-12 boys and Asian under-10 runner-up G Rohit outwitted Fide-rated SK Khasim in 44 moves.

Results (fourth round): Syed Anwar (TN) 4 bt J Ramakrishna (AP) 3, Manish Joshi (AP) 4 bt Gunasekharan (TN) 3, Dinesh Kumar Sharma (LIC) 3.5 bt Pranjal Das (WB) 2.5, Prasanna (TNCA) 3 drew Pankaj Joshi (venus) 3, C Natarajan (TN) 3 drew Misra (Ori) 3, Ajay Pande (UP) 3.5 bt Dinesh Kumar (TN) 3, M Srinivasa Rao (AP) 3 bt K S Krishna (CAPA) 2, Amarnadh (AP) 3 bt Ch Krishna (Rlys) 2, Pradeep Pathak (UP) 3 bt Karthik (CAPA) 2, LD Rao (IAF) 2.5 drew Ganesh Bhatt (Ker) 2.5, P Rajesh (TNCA) 3 bt K N Kumar (EMA) 2, Malleswara Rao (AP) 3 bt N Vinuthna (AP) 2, Raghvendra (Kar) 3 bt Baniksmanth (WB) 2, G Rohit (AP) 3 bt SK Khasim (AP) 2, S Satyakam (Ori) 2 drew Vedadri (AP) 2, Sai Srinivas (AP) 2.5 bt D Harika (AP) 1.5, N Raju (AP) 2.5 bt Ch Kavitha (AP) 1, Dev KAran Bhatti (Mah) 2 bt Mukesh Jain (Raj) 1, Mukesh Mandoli (Raj) 2 bt Gururajan (IAF) 1, Rahul Agarwal (Bihar) 2 bt Satyanarayana (AP) 1, Smeery Thakar (Hp) 1.5 drew Abhinav (AP) 1.5, Vennala (AP) 2 bt Jagan Mohan Reddy (KAr) 1, GN Gopal (Ker) 2 btGirtija Kumar (Chrome) 2, Basanta Singh (Mani) 2 bt Inao Sharma (1), Gaurav Nangia (Mah) 1 bt Neeraj Sharma (Raj) 0.5, Srikanth (EMA) 1.5 bt Naveena (AP) 0.5, Atul Pareek (Raj) 1.5 bt Chowdary (AP) 0.5, Keerthi Rana (AP) 1 bt Kranti Kiran (Chrome) 0, Praneeth (AP) 1 bt Varun SAgar (AP) 0.