Patna: Petroleum Sorts Promotion Board (PSPB) Grandmaster Lalith Babu was crowned the undisputed champion after Orissa GM Debashis Das defeated challenger Aravindh Chithambaram of Tamil Nadu in the National Premier Chess Championships which concluded here Friday. In his concluding match, Babu, could only achieve a draw against Swapnil Dhopade.
Babu scored nine points while Aravindh had 8.5 points in his kitty to finish second. Had Aravindh, who also started the day on 8.5 points, won the match against Debashis, his tally would have been 9.5 and he would have taken home the trophy.
Defending champion Karthikeyan could muster only the third position with 7.5 points, the same number as Debashis and SL Narayanan of Kerala. The tie-breaker system was implemented to differentiate between the trio.
Aravindh’s preferred Kings Indian defence was not beneficial to him, as Debashis attained a good positional advantage on the 12th move itself.
To add to his woes, Aravindh’s bad move of Ne5 on 18th move, for which he consumed just 18 seconds, gifted a winning position to his opponent.
When Debashis’ c6-pawn attacked Aravindh’s bishop, the latter’s ploy of attacking the queen not only failed miserably, but also proved to be fatal. Debashis demolished Aravindh in just 28 moves.
In an equal position arising out of the Catalan opening, Babu surprised everyone by allowing GM Dhopade to repeat the moves and get away with a draw claim in just 14 moves, shortest in terms of both moves and time.
Later, a relieved Babu admitted that the pressure on him was too much and he boldly took the risk of splitting the point.
