National Chess: Sethuraman closes in on second title

S.P. Sethuraman’s relentless pursuit for a second National chess title brought him within a draw of achieving his goal after overpowering Neelash Saha in 53 moves in the 10th and penultimate round here on Friday.

Winner in 2014, third seed Sethuraman played black and seized an advantage by trapping the white bishop by the 18th move. On the 36th move, Sethuraman traded his rook for a knight.

Armed with a bishop, knight and a rook for Saha’s rook pair, Sethuraman gained decisively from his rival’s rook-move on the 40th turn.

Solid upper hand

Soon, Sethuraman’s resources proved too much to handle for Saha, who resigned when facing a loss of another pawn or an imminent exchange of rooks.

The victory raised Sethuraman’s tally to nine points — one ahead of nearest rivals Abhijeet Gupta, Abhimanyu Puranik, Diptayan Ghosh, Aronyak Ghosh, Mitrabha Guha, Vishnu Prasanna and N.R. Vignesh.

So far, a performance level of 2657 against his rating of 2591 has given Sethuraman 15 rating points which should help him return to the 2600-bracket soon.

The 11-round event has seen players from Tamil Nadu and Bengal — some of them representing Petroleum and Railways — among the front-runners.

Exceptions Abhijeet and Puranik, seeded one and two, will look for a strong finish to take a high spot among the top-10 who share a tidy prize-fund of ₹30 lakh.

Important results (10th round): Neelash Saha (7.5) lost to S.P. Sethuraman (9); Aronyak Ghosh (8) drew with Diptayan Ghosh (8); N. R. Vignesh (8) drew with Vishnu Prasanna (8); Sayantan Das (7) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (8); Abhimanyu Puranik (8) bt G. Akash (7); Mitrabha Guha (8) bt Deepan Chakkravarthy (7); L. R. Srihari (7.5) drew with P. Iniyan (7.5).