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Ramesh, Aarthie post upset wins

Chennai Dec. 10 . Second-seeded Ramachandran Balagurunathan Ramesh of Indian Oil, Chennai scored an important second round victory over top-seeded Peter Horvath of Hungary to move into sole lead in the First Saturday Grandmaster chess tournament at Budapest on Monday.

Ramesh, who is the reigning British champion, is looking for a Grandmaster norm from the event. His long 65-move win with the white pieces came after black blundered a central pawn with a check in the sharp Sveshnikov variation of the Sicilian defence.

The keenly fought encounter ended when Ramesh's bishop and three king-side pawns raced towards the eighth rank. Horvath, who had a rook, could not avert being checkmated or letting white queen a pawn.

In the opening round, Ramesh drew with Woman FIDE Master Alexandra Dimitrijevic of Yugoslavia with the black pieces. The Indian faced a stiff king-side attack and had to surrender a rook for bishop. Thereafter, Ramesh clawed back and drew the game having a bishop and pawn against the white rook.

The Wipro-sponsored former World under-18 girls' champion Aarthie Ramaswamy scored an upset win over Hungarian International Master L. Eperjes in the second round after she managed to box the black king in a mating net in the middle of the board. Eperjes resigned on the 40th move in a rook and bishop ending that emerged from a Caro-Kann defence.

In the first round, Aarthie took a safety-first uncharacteristic draw with the white pieces by repeating the position against International Master Sandor Farago of Hungary in 15 moves. Aarthie had the benefit of the pairing having to start with two whites in her group but chose a rather sedate start. Aarthie jointly leads her International Master Group B section with 1.5 points from two games. Zeev Dub (Israel), Adam Popovics (Hungary) and Nicolas Gerard (France) are with her in the lead.

Aarthie requires six more points from nine games for her Woman Grandmaster norm.

Aarthie could make a Woman Grandmaster norm scoring 7.5 points or a men's International Master norm scoring eight points.

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