Sayantan pays for mistakes

NAGPUR: Sayantan Das, the third seed from Bengal, suffered a shock defeat after making some positional mistakes against Tamil Nadu's NR Visakh at the 38th National Sub-Junior U-15 Chess Championship at the Naivedhyam Celebrations Centre here on Wednesday.
Playing on the white side, Sayantan deviated from his regular start with the Kings Pawn to the English Opening.The Tamil Nadu youngster made most of Sayantan's bishop exchange in the 15th move to give a tactical push till the 33rd move which forced the fide master to resign in the 37th move.
Bengal's other entrant, top seed Diptayan Ghosh, pulled off a delicate Queen Pawn opening to beat A Visveshwar in 45 moves. He joined six others at the second spot with 3.5 points apiece.
Upcoming Delhi star Rishi Sardana, 15, caused one of tournament's biggest upset by toppling Tamil Nadu's world U-12 champion Murali Karthikeyan in just 39 moves.
To tackle Murali's King Pawn opening, Rishi, playing black, chose the Guico Pinno format and moved his pieces accurately to seize a pawn advantage in the 27th move, Thereafter, Rishi jumped his knight on the king's side of Murali to force the later to resign within 12 moves.
While Visakh made his presence felt in a big way, his brother Nr Vignesh halted the winning run of Kerala's SL Narayanan - member of the bronze medal winning team in the World U-16 Olympiad - with a 38-move draw.
With equal position till most part of the top board game, former Asian U-10 gold medalist Shardul Gagare from Maharashtra's holy city Shirdi agreed to sign the peace treaty with Seed No 7 Sidhant Mohapatra of Orissa after just 21 moves. Similarly, higher ranked Aravindh Chithambaram and Abhimanyu Puranik were forced to split the points with B Kumaran and Aradhya Garg, respectively.
Results (Round 4): Sidhant Mohapatra (3.5) drew with Shardul Gagare (3.5), Sayantan Das (3) lost to NR Visakh (4), NR Vignesh (3.5) drew with SL Narayanan (3.5), Murali Karthikeyan (3) lost to Rishi Sardana (4), B Kumaran (3.5) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (3.5), Diptayan Ghosh (3.5) bt A Visveshwar (3), Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh (2.5) lost to Praneeth Surya (3.5), Lakshmi Krishna Bhushan (3) drew with Vasantha Ruba Varman (3), Abhimanyu Puranik (2.5) drew with Aradhya Garg (3), Rajarishi Karthi (2) lost to Gireman Ja (3).