National Challengers Dharamshala: nine qualifiers

52nd National Challenger Chess in Dharamshala

Final report by Sagar Shah

The last round of a qualification tournament is always interesting. The players in the lead often tend to play it safe and we witness few quick handshakes. One of the leaders is often quite ambitious and tries to win the championship, much to the displeasure of his opponent who had come to make a draw! The players who are trailing the leaders are in a must-win situation and put everything at stake in order to win.

Something similar was on show on 19th May 2014 at the 13th and the final round of the 52nd National Challenger’s tournament held at Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. Nine spots were there to be taken. These nine players would qualify for the National Premier Championship’s to be held in November 2014. The following was the pairing for the top eight tables in the final round.

There were eight players in the lead with nine points as you can see. GM Vidit Gujrathi (2606) had the best tie break. As Vidit rightly said, in such tension-filled last rounds it’s usually the prize money which motivates the players to go for a win. But here the prize money was so low that there was nothing to gain and everything to lose. Naturally all the leaders played it safe and made quick draws.

The real fun started from the fifth board. Sethuraman was able to beat S.L. Narayanan in a Ruy Lopez, where more than the quality of moves, it was the control of nerves which helped the young GM to win. On the 6th board Sayantan Das’s decision to play the Trompowsky was highly questionable. After all it was certain that his 200 points higher rated opponent would go for the win. But the complicated opening was just what GM Lalith Babu required. He played a nice game to finish off his opponent in just 30 moves.

The last game of interest for us was on board seven. Vishnu’s 5.e3 in the Grunfeld was not so smart and Rajesh equalized without any difficulty. He never really gave Vishnu a chance at an advantage, which must have frustrated the GM. In his bid to win Vishnu overstretched so much that finally he was left with a very difficult position to defend, which he was not able to. Rajesh managed to win and also finished with 9.5/13.

Thus, we had an eleven-way tie at the top. As GM Pravin Thipsay rightly mentioned in his post on Facebook, “National Championships are getting tougher day by day! In the National rapid there was a seven-way tie for top spot, and now in the National B, it is an eleven-way tie for the title!”

Naturally there were going to be two players who were going to be out of the top nine qualifiers, and they were GM Abhijit Kunte (2484) and IM PDS Girinath(2312). The winner of the event was Vidit Gujrathi who played very consistently with six wins and seven draws to finish with a score of 9.5/13.

Vidit, receiving the winner’s trophy and a cash prize of Rs 60,000 ($1000).

Though Vidit won this extremely strong championship, he wasn’t thoroughly impressed with his play. When asked about his favourite game from the tournament he said. “I didn’t play very good games, but if I had to choose then the game against Swayams was interesting, although the combination against Rajesh was more attractive.” Here are both the games that Vidit mentioned.

Vidit (left) in a pensive mood in his crucial eighth round encounter with Murali Karthikeyan. With this game Vidit snatched the tournament lead and never let go. And here is a small trivia for the readers. What was the other significance of this game apart from Vidit becoming the leader of the tournament? You can find the answer at the bottom of this article.

The top three winners of the tournament: Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (first) with GM Sahaj
Grover (second) on his right and IM P Shyam Nikil (third) on his left

GM Sahaj Grover (2469), after becoming a GM and also playing in the prestigious C category Tata Steel tournament in 2012, witnessed a slump in form and also his rating. Maybe with this excellent performance the 19-year-old prodigy is all set to make his comeback.

The third place winner IM Shyam Nikhil played consistently, garnering 22 Elo points. This young lad from Tamil Nadu doesn’t speak much, and often it’s easy to miss him. But with such excellent performances, the world is bound to take notice of him sooner or later!

Sahaj playing against GM Deep Sengupta (2536) who finished fourth

GM Deep Sengupta (the picture above is taken from his Facebook page) is a fierce attacker on the chessboard. Sometimes he wins his games without his opponents really understanding where they have gone wrong. This can be attributed to his excellent tactical skills and combinative vision. Deep won the prestigious Hasting’s tournament in the year 2011. Maybe it is because of the growing defensive abilities of his opponents or due to some other reasons, Deep has lost almost 60 Elo points and from his career high Elo of 2589 and is now down to 2536. But finishing 4th here and now having the opportunity to play in the National Premier 2014, we can surely expect him to be back where he belongs, that is being one of the top players in Indian chess!

This man is made for big games! S.P. Sethuraman finished fifth
and qualified for the National Premier

Last year in National Challenger’s 2013 Sethuraman was on the same score of 8.5/12 and he faced IM K. Ratnakran in the last round. After building up a winning position, Sethuraman played poorly to lose the game and thus missed his chance to qualify for the National Premier 2013. But not this year. As already mentioned before, Sethuraman played with great patience and control on his nerves to beat S L Narayanan in the last round. This 1993 year born youngster from India is surely going to make it big.

IM Swayams Mishra (2442) finished sixth and gained 15 Elo points. Quite an unconventional player, Swayams is phenomenal at blitz chess. His Playchess blitz rating was at a point more than 2800 (currently 2611). After the tournament, when asked what was his secret of playing such a successful tournament, he modestly replied: “My opponents made more mistakes than me!”

IM VAV Rajesh (Elo 2382) played fighting chess throughout the tournament, especially in his last round game against GM Vishnu Prasanna, which he won and finished seventh.

Eighth place: India’s comeback man GM Lalith Babu (2571)

Lalith has becoming famous on two counts now.

1. For his phenomenal fighting spirit. At one point in the tournament he was 5.5/9, after he lost both the eighth and ninth games. Things looked pretty bleak for him. But like a real champion Lalith scored four out of four towards the end, pulling off a qualification spot which looked simply impossible after nine rounds.
2. For his yellow spectacles which I think are one of their kind in the chess world!

One of the most pragmatic and practical player in the Indian Chess circuit, Deepan Chakkravarthy’s style of play is so very unique. With minimum risks he achieves maximum results. And he is definitely one of the most consistent performers in India. The last qualification spot was taken up by him.

GM Abhijit Kunte (above) and IM PDS Girinath were the unlucky ones. In spite of scoring 9.5/13 and tying for the top spot they couldn’t make it to the top nine.

Final standings (after thirteen rounds)

• Standings for all 150 players

The National Premier 2014 will consist of total fourteen players. Nine qualifiers from National Challenger’s, last year’s National Premier winner Krishnan Sasikiran and the top four highest rated Indian players. Currently the top four by rating are Anand (2785), Harikrishna (2726), Sasikiran (2669) and Parimarjan Negi (2643). As Anand will most certainly not play, and Sasikirian is already qualified as the National Premier champion of 2013, eleven players from the National Challengers 2014 will be selected. That means both Kunte and Girinath will qualify for National Premier 2014.

A final goodbye to the chess playing hall of National Challenger’s 2014. The All India Chess Federation (AICF) must be applauded for the fact that they chose such a picturesque location for the tournament.

And now to reveal the secret regarding the significance of the game between Vidit and Murali Karthikeyan from round eight. It was the first time (at least in the official databases) that Vidit opened a game with the move 1.e4! Many people watching the game live on the Internet thought it was a transmission mistake! But it wasn’t and currently Vidit has an astronomical success rate with 1.e4 –100%!

Part II of this article will follow soon but that will deal almost exclusively with the beauty of Dharamshala. Many of the beautiful pictures that you have seen above have been sent to us by IM Venkatachalam Saravanan (2341) who himself was playing the tournament. Not only a strong chess player, Saravanan is a wonderful writer and also a great photographer. You will get to witness more of his work in Part II of this article, which will follow soon.

Photos: IM Ratnakaran Kantholi, Venkatachalam Saravanan

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN You can use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.