S S Ganguly suffers shock defeat

National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly suffered a shock defeat in the second round but easily garnered a full point victory in the next in the second Parsvnath International Chess tournament in Delhi on Thursday.

Ganguly earned his first victory of the tournament in the third round against Harish Kumar, who had defeated Grandmaster Koneru Humpy, yesterday.

Opting for the Scotch opening, Ganguly earned early equality and then the pawns to see the 25-year-old Delhi boy resign in 40 moves.

The Kolkata-based player had a poor morning session when he paid for his blunders and got trapped in the mating net to eventually surrender against Somya Ranjan Mishra, rated 2227, in 59 moves.

Mishra gave him many chances to bounce back, but Ganguly, who resorted to a Sicilian opening, appeared at his worst to cash in on the opportunities, despite a pleasant endgame, though.

Humpy, after her first round defeat, won both her matches today against unrated Shikharesh Bhaduri and Shantanu Lahiri (2073).

On the top board, Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda lost to former Commonwealth champion Atanu Lahiri in a one-sided third round game.

Lahiri found himself in good position from beginning as Chanda unknowingly played the same game as his opponent's previous one and won two bishops for his rook.

Chanda had a successful outing in the morning as he earned a point against Kantilal Dave.

Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua won his second round match against G N Gopal while Saidali Iuldachev beat Tamil Nadu's C Praveen Kumar, who defeated Amardeep Tiwari later in the day.

Top seed Pavel Kostur of Kazakhstan was unbeaten against Vinod Bhagwat.

Grandmaster R B Ramesh continued his winning streak outwitting C S Unni and G B Joshi, respectively in the two rounds.

Important results:

Kantilal Dave lost to Sandipan Chanda; D Ravishankar lost to Sriram Jha, Tejas Bakre drew with Panditrao Kiran, Krishan Thapa lost to Deepan Chakravarthy, S Satyapragyan drew with V Ravichandran, P Konguvel bt K Ramu, Nassir Wajih bt D S Negi, Vakil Akhtar lost to Drovavalli Harika, Indranil Das bt K Visweswaran, Biswajit Roy Choudhary lost to Aarthie Ramaswamy, Gopal Ashok Rathore lost to Neelotpal Das, Konery Humpy bt Shikharesh Bhaduri, Swati Ghate bt Aman Chahal.