Kolkata: Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly narrowly missed out on his seventh National chess title after he was pipped at the post by Andhra GM Karthik Venkataraman in Gurugram on Tuesday. Karthik, Surya and International Master Neelash Saha all ended with nine points and the final standing was arrived at using the Buchholz System as Karthik’s tie-break score was 78, against Ganguly’s 77.5.
This was 25-year-old from Tirupati, Karthik’s second national title after he won it in 2022.Nineteen GMs, 12 IMs and two WGMs took part in the 11-round meet.
Karthik scored a crucial win with black pieces against reigning Commonwealth champion GM Mitrabha Guha in a must-win scenario in the last round on Tuesday while Ganguly, who enjoyed a half-a-point lead going into the final match, was held by IM Himal Gusain.
Ganguly, who won the national championship six times in a row from 2003-08 and finished eighth last year in Pune, maintained a winning run till the seventh round but draws in the last four games saw him miss the title. “I stopped playing Nationals as I did not get motivation. But now with new crop of players, I enjoyed the tournament,” Ganguly told TOI. “I only felt I could have gone more attacking with black against (defending champion) SP Sethuraman (in 8th round),” he added.
“I came here without any expectation, but it went quite well for me” third-placed Saha, whose previous best at the nationals was a seventh-place finish, said. The youngster felt losing back-to-back matches to Ganguly and Karthik hurt his cause. But Saha made a great comeback by winning the next four matches on the trot next.
Bengal players ruled the roost as four from the state ended among top five with GM Diptayan Ghosh coming fourth and IM Aronyak Ghosh finishing fifth with 8.5 points each. Diptayan, the reigning national champion in the rapid and blitz format, stopped Ganguly’s winning run by playing a well-calculated Spanish Game against his senior statemate to hold him in 68 moves. Aronyak followed suit by drawing against Ganguly in the 10th round that opened up the field.
Diptayan too slipped, drawing two consecutive matches after the one against Ganguly.
“I could have approached those games a bit differently perhaps,” he stated.