Sasikiran enhances lead

Top seed Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran of PSCB stretched his lead to 1.5 points with a crushing victory over teammate International Master D V Prasad in the 14th round of the 38th National 'A' chess championship in Delhi on Monday.

Defending champion GM Abhijit Kunte of PSCB caught up with GM Dibyendu Barua of TISCO in second postion, on 9.5 points, after demolishing lowly-rated Nassir Wajih of Railway Board.

GM norm holder P Konguvel holds the third spot with 8.5 points despite a loss against IM Neeraj Kumar Mishra of Tisco.

Sasikiran chose the sharp and fashionable Hungarian variation to counter Prasad's Grunfeld defence with black pieces. It was a tactical battle all through and Prasad's king position was ripped open early in the middlegame.

The compensation came in the form of better-developed pieces but the amount of attention required on the kingside pushed Prasad to the wall. After the exchange of queens in the middlegame, Sasikiran opened the king side completely by leaving a couple of pieces hanging and won an exchange.

Prasad won the exchange back but was left to defend a chanceless two pawns down endgame where Sasikiran completed the rituals without much ado.

Barua missed a few winning variations before settling for a draw with IM K Murugan of NLC in a Queens gambit declined game with black pieces.

Murugan embarked on a dubious plan in the middlegame and fell under tremendous pressure on the kingside. Barua could have sacrificed a couple of pieces to force checkmate at one point but fumbled to let Murugan off the hook.

Abhjit had no difficulties in toppling Nassir Wajih in a Sicilian Scheveningen game with black pieces. Nassir fell for a well-known opening bait and handed Abhijit the initiative in the middlegame. Abhjit opened up the queenside to win a pawn.

Mishra continued to excel with black pieces and took his tally to a whopping 6/7 with the unfavourable colour. It was another Sicilian Taimanov on board after Konguvel opened with the king pawn.

After a level position in the middle game, Konguvel had to pay the price for his over-ambitious play as Mishra, through a perfectly disguised manoeuvre, got his queen and rook to launch an irresistible attack against the king.

GM Pravin Thipsay of Bank Sports Board came back into reckoning for top honours with third successive victory in the tournament defeating IM Lanka Ravi.

IM Shekhar Sahu of BSB accounted for double IM norm holder Sriram Jha of LIC while double GM norm holder IM Pendyala Harikrishna of Wipro got the better of IM V Saravanan of PSCB in other interesting matches of the day.

Results round 14:
K Sasikiran (11) bt D V Prasad (7.5); K Murugan (5.5) drew D Barua (9.5); Nassir Wajih (3) lost to Anhijit Kunte (9.5); P Konguvel (8.5) lost to N K Mishra (7.5); S S Ganguly (8) drew S R Chowdhry (5.5); Lanka Ravi (6) lost to P M Thipsay (7.5); P Harikrishna (7) bt V Saravanan (3); S C Sahu (6.5) beat Sriram Jha (5); Neelotpal Das (3.5) drew G B Prakash (6) and Atanu Lahiri (7) had a bye.