Stardom beckons 12-yr-old Venkatesh

After his 10th round victory, he had 7.5 points and was placed joint third. Neelotpal Das of Goodricke Chess Academy, Shankar Roy of Railways, Rahul shetty of Indian Airlines and Anup Deshmukh of LIC were in the second position with eight points each. The lead stayed with top seed K Sasikiran of TN, who increased the margin between him and the rest to one point.

Venkatesh played a flawless game in Reti Opening and demonstrated his tactical acumen. From what looked like a harmless position, Venkatesh, with black pieces, uncorked forced combinations. It was the Queenfile that gave him endless possibilities. He exchanged the Queen on move 15, took control of it by doubling the rooks and then posted a passed pawn on move 21.

Retaining the bishop pair, he then won a pawn on move 25. On move 26, action unfolded as he offered a bishop sacrifice which would have spelt doom instantly had it been accepted. On simplification, he gave up his passed pawn for sweeping the Queenside and collecting three pawns. By move 33, Girinath had nothing to play.

Sasikiran used the Torre Attack against G B Joshi of Indian Airlines and won in 38 moves. Joshi allowed white a break in the centre. By keeping his pawn in the sixth rank, Sasikiran took control of the seventh rank with his Queen and rook to find a mating attack.

Neelotpal Das knows he is lucky to have squeezed a full point from A Pavanasam of NLC. In the Sicilian Pelikan, the position was equal after Queens were exchanged on move nine. Das offered a draw in a rook and pawn ending to Pavanasam on move 38 which was declined. The NLC player then committed a mistake and lost a pawn on the Queenside. Das promoted his Queen-bishop pawn for which Pavanasam had to give his rook by move 61. “He played for a win; this helped me,” said Das.

CHANDA SHOCKS PRAKASH: Fourteen-year-old Sandipan Chanda, seeded 45th here improved his chances of making to the National A for the first time and in the process sent former National junior champion and second seed G B Prakash of BSB out of the reckoning with his 10th round victory. Prakash made a positional mistake in the Kings Indian Defence and allowed Chanda to sacrifice an exchange which he got back later. Chanda collected three pawns by move 44.

IM elect Jayant Gokhale of PSCB gave the knockout punch to IM Sudhakar Babu of BSB in 29 moves of Dutch Defence.

TOPBOARD RESULTS OF THE TENTH ROUND

Sasikiran (TN) 9 bt G B Joshi (IA) 7.5; Rahul shetty (IA) 8 drew with Shankar Roy (Rlys) 8; V Koshy (Bih) 7.5 drew with Sriram Jha (LIC) 7.5; Neelotpal Das (Goodricke) 8 bt A Pavanasam (NLC) 7; Anup Deshmukh (LIC) 8 bt S K Rathore (MP) 7; G B Prakash (BSB) 6.5 lost to Sandeepan Chanda (Goodricke) 7.5; P D S Girinath (Rlys) 6.5 lost to M R Venkatesh (TN) 7.5; N K Mishra (Bih) 7.5 bt Kidambi (TN) 6.5; J S Gokhale (PSCB) 7.5 bt Sudhakar Babu (BSB) 6.5; Jitendrakumar (Bih) 6.5 lost to Yogesh Gore (MP) 7.5; K V Shantaram (BSB) 6.5 lost to S Saha (WB) 7; S Vijayalakshmi (TN) 6.5 drew with C S Gokhale (IA) 6.5; S Nasir ali (UP) 6 lost to Mitrakanth (NLC) 7; V Saravanan (PSCB) 7 bt Roktim Bandopadhyay (W.Bengal) 6; Hari Om Sharma (P&T) 6 lost to R B Ramesh (PSCB) 7; R Karthik (TN) 7 bt Ramkumar Mishra (P&T) 6; M B Muralidharan (Ker) 7 bt K Haridas (TN) 6; Paul Arokiaraj ((TN) 6 lost to D K Sharma (LIC) 7; Tejas Bakre (IA) 6.5 drew with R M Dongre (Mah) 6.5; Manojkumar Panigrahi (Ori) 7 bt S S Ganguly (Goodricke) 6; S S Soman (Mah) 6 drew with Nawalesh Sharma (Bih) 6.5.