Kunte, Vijalakshmi take a beating

Kunte, Vijalakshmi take a beating
Vijay Tagore

Hyderabad, July 18: Abhijit Kunte and S Vijayalakshmi suffered reverses on an eventful day in the Grandmasters chess tournament at Taj Residency here today. The National men's and women's champions lost to their superior rivals but the manner of their defeat undermined their hitherto high reputation. While Grandmaster Kunte was a poor shadow of his own self against top seed Evgeny Vladimirov, Vijayalakshmi was uncharacteristically erratic against Grandmaster Alexander Fominyh.

In the third round of the 12-round tournament, the positions remained unclear as one of the participants, Grandmaster Leonid Yurtaev of Kirgystan, failed to reach the venue. His game against Sandipan Chanda, who has two points from as many rounds, was postponed. But even three days after the tournament started, the orgainser and All-India Chess Federation officials had no clue about his participation.

In the other matches of the day, Aarthie Ramaswamy suffered her second defeat, losing to International Master Surya Sekhar Ganguly after six hours of lacklustre struggle while GM title-aspirant DV Prasad failed to break his jinx and settled for a draw for the third time in succession. GM K Sasikiran, meanwhile, played a 17-move draw against GM Alexander Sorokin of Argentina.

In the longest battle seen so far in the tournament, Vijayalakshmi went down to Fominyh in time scramble. She had 11 seconds left in her clock to 2 minutes and 28 seconds in her opponent's watch, when she was mated by the Russian GM. But the Chennai girl refused to accept defeat and complained to the arbiter that she was unjustly asked to play from a drawish position.It required the intervention of chief arbiter Koya to settle the matter.Earlier, Viji claimed only draw was possible from a position. But the arbiter Nasiruddin Ghalib rejected her claim and asked her to continue after the second time control stating that a result was possible.

Viji, however, refused to refer the matter to the appeals committee. ``It would be unfair on my game and my opponent,'' said she gracefully accepting the verdict.Results (Round three): K Sasikiran (2) drew with M Sorokin (1.5); Aarthie Ramaswamy (0.5) lost to SS Ganguly (1); DV Prasad (1.5) drew with Sergey Lonov (1); Abhijit Kunte (0.5) lost to Vladimirov (2); Vijayalakshmi (1) lost to A Fominyh (2); P Harikrishna (2) bye; Sandipan Chanda (2) vs Yurtaev postponed.