Petroleum Sports Promotion Board inter unit chess tournament held

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, March 25: The 21st Petroleum Sports Promotion Board InterUnit Chess Tournament, comprising of top class Indian GMs and at the MRPL Employees Club, Bala, Mangalore, was conducted on March 24. The 5 day event was organized by the Mangalore Refinery & Petro Chemicals Ltd. and supported by South Kanara District Chess Association, in team and individual championship formats.  

The tournament was inaugurated by Shri K Lakshminarayana, Group General Manager (HR), MRPL and Shri P.P.Upadhyaya, Group General Manager Refinery In charge, MRPL. The PSPB Teams led by their respective captains handed over their flags to Shri Vivek Satyajit, PSPB Assistant. Secretary. Smt Lekshmi Kumaran, DGM Corporate Communications, MRPL welcomed the gathering. Shri Ajay Bhatia, Sr. Manager (Marketing) MRPL was the chief coordinator of the event. Mr Seetharam Rai, Gen. Secretary MRPL Employees Club delivered the vote of thanks. The President of SKDCA Mr. Gururaj was present along with the Chief Arbiter Prof. Anantharam during the function.  

ONGC has fielded two teams with the “A” comprising of all GMs Sasikiran, The world number 2 female player Koneru Humpy, Sandipan Chanda & Neelotpal Das. The 2nd seeded team BPCL was captained by GM Sundararajan Kidambi, followed by GM Gopal, former World Junior Champion  GM Abhijeet Gupta, recent Scottish Championship winner GM Arun Prasad. IOC has its share of stars with 6 times National Champion GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly, former British Open winner GM Abhijit Kunte, former World U16 Champion IM B Adhiban, and World U16 Champion IM SP Sethuraman. Apart from these, players like former Asian Junior Champion GM Deepan Chakkravarthy & World Junior Champion Soumya Swaminathan of IOC - B, World U16 Silver Medallist Vidit Santhosh Gujrati & former World U14 Champion WIM Padmini Rout of ONGC – B add charm to the tournament.

Top seed ONGC A – resting the captain GM Sasikiran defeated OIL by 3:1, the sole consolation for OIL was IM Imocha scoring over IM Konguvel on the 4th board. HPCL which has inducted 2 new youngsters former U17 National Champions FM Shyam Nikhil and WFM Pon N Krithika lost to BPCL by a 0:4 score. IOC with GM Ganguly on the top board had a pretty easy round by scoring 4 : 0 against Assam Oil Div. At the end of the first round 5 teams ONGC – A& B, IOC A&B and BPCL are in the lead with 2 match points each.

Star studded ONGC A and BPCL teams are leading with  6 match points at the end of 3rd round of the PSPB Inter Unit Chess Tournament organized by MRPL in their Employees Club ,  MRPL campus.

On an enterprising second day all the games ended decisively. Fancied ONGC A one among the overnight leaders beat IOC A the third seeds by a 3:1 margin on the second table. GM Neelotpal Das of ONGC surprised GM Ganguly of IOC in a game of minor piece ending after the former went ahead with a pawn and converted it into a win. IM Adhiban played a good game against GM Sasikiran from the black side of Catalan Opening only to lose in the King and pawn ending after forced exchange of Queen by Sasi to win a pawn. The sole consolation for IOC – A team was GM Abhijit Kunte beating World No.2 female player GM Koneru Humpy convincingly in a Queen’s Gambit Accepted game in 84 moves.

Meanwhile, the second seeds BPCL were impeccable in their 4:0 sweep against ONGC – B on the first table. Much was expected from young ONGC B debutants WIM Padmini Rout and IM Vidit Gujrati.  But GM Arun Prasad of BPCL was clinical in his win over Vidit in a Slav game after getting the better with 2 pieces for a rook . Padmini lost to Abhijeet Gupta in the a Ruy lopez game , only to lose her Queen in a discovered attack after the position was slightly inferior.IM Venkatesh outplayed Koshy quickly after ripping the king side of the latter. A Pyrotechnic display is on the cards in the 4th round  match between ONGC A and BPCL.

 

	5	ONGC - B		0 - 4	2	BPCL
1	IM	Ravi Lanka	2361	lost to	GM	Geetha Narayanan Gopal	2604
2	IM	Koshy Varugeese	2310	lost to	IM	Venkatesh M R	2441
3	WIM	Padmini Rout	2319	lost to	GM	Gupta Abhijeet	2560
4	IM	Vidit Santosh Gujrathi	2504	lost to	GM	Arun Prasad S	2549
3.2	1	ONGC - A		3 - 1	3	IOC - A
1	GM	Neelotpal Das	2445	beat	GM	Ganguly Surya Shekhar	2672
2	GM	Koneru Humpy	2622	lost to	GM	Kunte Abhijit	2528
3	GM	Sasikiran Krishnan	2686	beat	IM	Adhiban B	2510
4	GM	Sandipan Chanda	2635	beat	IM	Sethuraman S P	2493
3.3	7	HPCL		1 - 3	4	IOC - B
1	FM	Shyam Nikil P	2385	beat	IM	Ravi T S	2327
2	WFM	Pon Nkrithika	2135	lost to	WGM	Soumya Swaminathan	2288
3		Patil G N	0	lost to	GM	Deepan Chakkravarthy J	2485
4		Balasubramanyan K	0	lost to	IM	Sengupta Deep	2496
3.4	10	GAIL (INDIA) LTD.		1 - 3	6	OIL
1		Pandey R K	0	lost to		Baruah Utpal	2107
2		Amar Singh	0	lost to		Manoj Barua	2120
3		Rakesh Shahi	0	beat		Dharmeswar Pegu	1953
4		Bairagi S	0	lost to		Imocha Laishram	2185
3.5	9	EIL		4 - 0	11	MRPL
1		Suryanarayana J	0	beat		Hemachandra Rao Y	0
2		Sahu M K	0	beat		Kumaraswamy	0
3		Solankhi S S	0	beat		Srinivasa Rao I	0
4		Karthikeyan	0	beat		Subramanya Prabhu	0

 

Important Results of Round 2