The star-studded Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) recorded their seventh successive win to stay at the top with 14 points in the HCA 33rd National Team Championship at KV Bhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium on Monday. On the top table, LIC and Indian Railway ‘B’ teams are in the second spot with 11 points apiece.
GM Abhijeet Gupta of PSPB beat Sagar Shah of Maharashtra Chess Association from the white side of Queen’s Indian defense in 42 moves. Gupta saddled black with a isolated pawn on d5 square and later invaded the black’s king side with Qe8 on 38th move and ended the hunt 4 moves later. Shah’s team mate Atul Dahale played a better game against GM Adhiban from the white side of Nimzo Indian Rubinstein defense. The players agreed for a draw on the 38th move with Atul holding a slight advantage and an extra pawn. Meanwhile GM Sethuraman’s passer pawns on a and c files saw him through comfortably against Snehal Bhosale. PSPB won the match with 3-1 score and has so far won all the matches.
The 2nd table games between the Railways A and B team ended in quick draws, probably aiming at the finish in the podium. LIC took on Tamil Nadu A on the third table and won with a narrow margin of 2.5-1.5. On table 5 Air India beat Andhra Bank 3.5 - 0.5.
Meanwhile, in the women’s section Air India maintained their lead at the end of the sixth round after a 3-1 win over a young AP Race team. On the top board of the first table IM Tania Sacdev sacrificed a Rook for Knight against Pratyusha Bodda on the 15th move to create a stronger passer on the c file. Tania won two pieces for the rook on the 26th move and won pawns at will to force resignation on the 40th move. The experienced IM Vijayalakshmi opened up the attack with g pawn on the 21st move from the white side of English opening and won a piece two moves later to win the game in 36 moves. Air India have won all the matches so far and move on to 12 points followed by AAI who are trailing with 10 match points.
Results: Men (7th round): PSPB bt Maharashtra 3-1 (A Gupt bt Sagar Shah; B Adhiban drew Atul Dahale; SP Sethuraman bt S Bhosale; D Sengupta drew S Phadke).
Indian Railways ‘A’ drew Indian Railways ‘B’ 2-2 (Swapnil S Dhopade drew MS Thejkumar; Argyadip Das drew H Sharma; RR Laxman drew A Khamparia; Saptarshi R Chowdhury drew K Rathnakaran).
LIC of India bt Tamil Nadu ‘A’ 2.5-1.5 (A Deshmukh bt M Vinoth Kumar; Sriram Jha drew RA P Kumar; A Lahiri bt S Krishnan Ram; Dinesh K Sharma bt DS Shashank).
Airports Authority of India bt Kerala 3-1 (V Prasanna Vishnu bt OT Anilkumar; GA Stany bt SR Harikrishna; VAV Rajesh drew Antony Joy; S Nitin drew K Arjun).
Air India bt Andhra Bank 3.5-5 (S Swayangsu drew VK Matta; C Ghokale bt J Ramakrishna; R Shetty bt KV Subramanyam; GB Joshi bt P Kamalkar).