PSCB well ahead in National chess

Defending champions and top seed Petroleum Sports Control Board increased their tally to 15.5 points by derailing Indian Railways 3-1 in the fifth round of 24th National team chess championship in Nagpur on Thursday.

Indian Airlines, with 14 points, were in the second spot while Indian Railways and Western Railway were in the third position with 13.5 points each.

PSCB's top board player GM K Sasikiran employed the Caro-Kan set up against king pawn opening of Railways' S Girinath. The latter handled opening phase irregularly to take Sasikiran out of well-analysed lines. That however posed no problem for Sasikiran, who converted the game into an ending with one knight and pawns on either side, to win on the 48th move.

On the second board GM Abhijit Kunte opened with king pawn. His opponent B T Murlikrishnan (IR) also played irregularly in the opening and gave Kunte a free hand to exchange pieces.

On the 22nd move Kunte opted for an ending in which both had two rooks and pawns. Murli had an isolated pawn on E-6. Kunte showed his prowess in handling such endings and carved out a win in 57 moves. Other two games were drawn both after 25 moves.

On the second table, Indian Airlines also derailed Western Railway 3-1. The only point scored by WR came from Rashmin Pulekar's win over young S Meenakashi of Indian Airlines.

In the old-Indian defence played by latter, Rashmin exchanged queens and with clever manouvering won a pawn on the 24th move and the game on 50th move.

Woman Grandmaster S Vijayalakshmi of Airlines playing black side of the kings Indian defence against WR's young and upcoming Pankaj Joshi encountered no resistence and won in 33 moves. Both IM Tejas Bakre and S Satyapragyan playing white crushed the Sicilian defences offered by WR's Shashikant Kutwal and Amradeep Bartakke respectively.

Anup Deshmukh president of Nagpur Chess Academy on third table exhibited his unique skills when he beat Central Revenue's Pandit Rao in Sicillian defence game. Deshmukh created an artistic won of 24 moves full of fireworks. N Sanjay of Revenue beat S Majumdar in 29 moves of the kings indian defence while CRSB's Vinod Bhagwat made short work of B K Shrivastava in 33 moves.

Dilip Pagey easily equalised playing the grunfeld defence with black against Revenue's S S Soman. Weak moves by Pagey however gave huge plus to Soman. On his faltering to encash on it and split points in 53 moves.