Short wins Commonwealth

Nigel Short clinches Commonwealth title
Rakesh Rao

NAGPUR: Ironical as it may sound, dramatic turn of events on the top two boards led to a somewhat anti-climactic end to the title-race of the Commonwealth chess championship here.

The suspense over the likely champion ended in less than three hours into the 11th round and left Nigel Short as a relieved, yet worthy, three-time winner of the event in as many appearances in the country.

When Surya Shekhar Ganguly benefited from his Indian Oil colleague Abhijit Kunte’s oversight to claim a knight and win in just 22 moves, Short and S. Arun Prasad had played 16 just moves in their top-board battle.

‘Pathetic’ result

Even as Ganguly and Kunte were analysing the position, Short left his chair, quickly described the result as “pathetic” and returned to his board.

He made no secret of what he thought of the ‘game’ involving the two Indians but used all the anguish to concentrate harder to combat Arun.

Ganguly, sensing that Arun had a good chance of holding Short, was increasingly hopeful of finishing tied first in the championship.

But his hopes ended within an hour when Arun chose to resign after 29 moves in an inferior position without making any serious attempt to salvage at least a draw.Surprise resignation

“Actually, Arun stunned me by offering to resign in that position,” admitted the British top seed after emerging as the champion with 9.5 points.

“Arun’s position was not ‘dead’ lost. He could have continued for a few moves remembering that this was a pressure game. In the given situation, I could have made a mistake. But by resigning in that position, all the pressure was off in a flash. I felt relieved. And I am not complaining,” said Short after scoring his sixth successive victory and making timely amends for the poor start.

Short walked away with a silver trophy and a cheque for Rs. 1.80 lakh. Ganguly, who retained his runner-up spot following an unbeaten display, settled for Rs. 1.25 lakh. Bangladesh’s Enamul Hossain defeated M.S. Thejkumar in 47 moves to collect the third prize of Rs. one lakh. Meenakshi is best

The best woman player’s prize, worth Rs. 20,000, went to Woman Grandmaster Subbaraman Meenakshi of Air India who collected seven points, following her last round victory over Vinod Bhagwat.

The results (Indians unless stated):

11th round: S. Arun Prasad (8) lost to Nigel Short (Eng, 9.5); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (9) bt Abhijit Kunte (7.5); M. R. Venkatesh (8) drew with Parimarjan Negi (8); R. R. Laxman (8) drew with Neelotpal Das (8); Enamul Hossain (Ban, 8.5) bt M. S. Thejkumar (7.5); Ziaur Rahman (8) bt Aswin Jayaram (7); D. P. Singh (7.5) drew with Dibyendu Barua (7.5); P. Magesh Chandran (8) bt P. Konguvel (7); Deepan Chakkravarthy (8) bt C. Praveen Kumar (7); R. Premnath (7) lost to G. Rohit (8); Deep Sengupta (8) bt Aleksandar Wohl (Aus, 7).

Niaz Murshed (Ban, 7) lost to Vidit Gujarati (8); P.D.S. Girinath (8) bt Akshat Khamparia (7); Saptarshi Roy (7.5) drew with Himanshu Sharma (7.5); K. Priyadarshan (7.5) bt Arghyadip Das (7); Abhijeet Gupta (7.5) bt T. Purushothaman (6.5); Sohan Phadke (7) drew with S. Kidambi (7); S. Satyapragyan (7) drew with G.B. Joshi (7); B.T. Murali Krishnan (7.5) bt Syed Mahfuzur Rahman (Ban, 6.5); P. Karthikeyan (7) drew with Kiran Manisha Mohanty (7); Debashis Das (7) drew with Akshayraj Kore (7).

Swapnil Dhopade (7) drew with Prasanna Rao (7); R.A. Pradeep Kumar (6.5) lost to Lanka Ravi (7); Suvrajit Saha (7) drew with Abdul Jabbar (7); Guy West (Aus, 7) drew with Girish Koushik (7); Vaibhav Suri (7) drew with Shashikant Kutwal (7); Rahul Sangma (6.5) lost to Tejas Ravichandran (7.5).

Final standings: 1. Short, 2. Ganguly, 3. Hossain, 4-15. Arun, Venkatesh, Rohit, Vidit, Negi, Laxman, Deep, Deepan, Girinath, Magesh, Ziaur and Neelotpal.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/