Suvrajit Saha

Ahmedabad: International Master Suvrajit Saha of Bengal shot into sole lead with a fine victory over Aswin Jayaram of Tamil Nadu in the sixth round of the 44th National B chess championship here on Tuesday.

With his sixth victory on the trot in the 13-round tournament, Suvrajit now has six points in as many games and the Calcutta-based IM will now train his sight for the title in this premier event.

Tamil Nadu’s P. Shyam Nikhil, International Master Lanka Ravi of PSPB and Vikramaditya Kamble of Maharashtra are just behind the leader with 5.5 points from six games so far.

Shyam Nikhil was quite impressive in carving out a methodical victory over Valay Parikh, while Lanka Ravi also demonstrated his technical prowess to outwit MP’s Akshat Khamparia. Kamble capitalised on an optical blunder by IM Varugeese Koshy of PSPB to coast to a win.

With seven rounds still to go in the event organised to select the top 30 for the National A championship, nine players including top seed K Rathnakaran of Kerala and former national champion P Konguvel of PSPB are joint fifth with five points each.

The sixth round was not devoid of upsets and the biggest casualty was triple Grandmaster norm holder G.B. Prakash of BSB, who is certainly finding the going tough after a long lay-off from national events. He was beaten by Vinod Bhagwat of Maharashtra. After the loss, Prakash, a former winner of National B, remained on 3.5 points while Bhagwat edged up to 4.5.

Suvrajit was a class act against Jayaram who could not do much with his white pieces against the Sicilian Nazdorf. Playing black, Suvrajit countered white’s attack in style forcing the opposite king to remain in the centre and later picked a handful of pawns to force resignation. The game lasted 59 moves.