Barua catches up with Sasikiran

Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua of Tata Steel caught up with top seed GM Krishnan Sasikiran of PSCB at the top of the leaderboard with a resounding victory over IM Surya Shekhar Ganguly in the 18th and penultimate round of the 38th National 'A' chess championship in Delhi on Thursday.

Barua and Sasikiran have 13 points each and the championship is poised for a nail-biting finale. In the final round on Friday, Barua takes on Saptarshi with white pieces while Sasikiran will face IM Neelotpal Das.

Defending champion GM Abhijit Kunte (11.5 points) of PSCB finished his campaign with a hard-fought draw against GM Pravin Thipsay of Bank Sports Board. Abhijit is assured of at least a tied third place as he has a bye in the last round.

IM Neeraj Mishra almost ensured himself a place in the national team barring a major turnaround in the last round. The senior Sports Assistant with Tata Steel played a quick draw against IM K Murugan of Neyveli Lignite Corporation to stay in fourth place with 10.5 points.

Three players, IM S S Ganguly and P Konguvel (both PSCB) and P Harikrisha of Wipro, follow Mishra with 10 points each.

The last round games will be crucial for these three as only the top six make it to the Indian team. Harikrishna has a tough nut in Mishra with the black pieces while Konguvel takes on IM Shekhar Sahu who seems to have lost out on a berth in the team. Ganguly will play with black pieces against double IM norm holder Sriram Jha of LIC.

Ganguly, who had been sitting pretty in the tournament so far, played the Tarrasch variation with white peices against the French defence of Barua.

The middlegame witnessed a few fireworks despite the queens trading early on the 14th move and Barua got a dynamically balanced position. Cashing in on the open Queen Bishop file Barua inflicted the first defeat on Ganguly.

Harikrishna's journey back to reckoning has come through some excellent tactical chess and on the receiving end today was the formidable IM D V Prasad of PSCB with black pieces.

The Trompowsky opening got transposed to a set up akin to the Pirc defence where Harikrishna came out firing on all cylinders with a king side onslaught.

After weakening the kingside a little on the 9th move Harikrishna struck in the centre with imaginative piece play and was not deterred by the exchange of a few minor pieces.

The final blow for Prasad came on the 20th move as Harikrishna won a pawn and he wrapped up the game in another three moves.

IM Lanka Ravi accounted for Sriram Jha while IM Atanu Lahiri defeated S Sahu in other decisive games of the day.

Results (Round 18):
S S Ganguly (10) lost to D Barua (13); P M Thipsay (9) drew Abhijit Kunte (11.5); K Murugan (7) drew N K Mishra (10.5); P Harikrishna (10) bt D V Prasad (9); Neelotpal Das (6) drew P Konguvel (10); S C Sahu (7.5) lost to Atanu Lahiri (8); Lanka Ravi (8) bt Sriram Jha (6); Nassir Wajih (4) drew G B Prakash (7.5); S Roy Chowdhry (7) drew V Saravanan (5).