Thejkumar continues to impress

After drawing with two Grandmasters earlier,
former Under 25 National Champion
M.S. Thejkumar (ELO 2355) of Karnataka kept his
hopes alive for an International Master Norm when he
drew with 15th seed Grandmaster elect Abhijeet Gupta (ELO 2470)
of Bharat Petroleum in the sixth round of the Commonwealth
Chess Championships being played in New Delhi.

Abhijeet needed a win to get to 2500 ELO and thus
become India's 17th Grandmaster. Thejkumar had other ideas
and effectively paried all his threats to garner half a point
after 29 moves of the Queen's Gambit Declined opening.
Considered one of the upcoming youngsters of
Karnataka, Thejkumar had equality throughout the game
and when down to their final minutes on the clock,
both the players agreed for a truce in a Rook and
pawn ending. Both Thejkumar and Gupta are on 4.5 points,
just one point behind the leaders.

Antonio Viani D'Cunha (ELO 1988) of Mangalore was not
so lucky when he went down fighting to IM K. Rathnakaran
(ELO 2433) in 43 moves of a King's Indian Attack. The Keralite
International Master, who had won the Ranjit Patkar tournament
in Karwar, used his spatial advantage on the Queenside well to
gradually wear out the youngster. Earlier, in the fourth and fifth rounds,
the 12 year old had beaten Aditya Udeshi (ELO 2355) and Sohan
Phadke (ELO 2259) both of Maharashtra in exciting games.
Antonio has justification to be elated as he will be gaining
tremendous number of valuable ELO points
from this tournament if he continues in this vein.

In other important results, M.G.Gahan (ELO 2005) defeated
P. Phoobalan (ELO 2250) and G.A. Stany held P. Karthikeyan
(ELO 2340) to a draw. Veteran IM D.V. Prasad also had no
difficulty in putting it across Laisram Imocha (ELO 2272).