Title for Petroleum Men, Air India Women

Petroleum Sports Promotion Board was too strong as they retained the title in the 33rd National Team Chess Championship that concluded at Hyderabad on February 26, 2013.PSPB fielded an all-GM team and they won all nine matches to win with sheer dominance. They also scored 29 points out of maximum 36.

Sethuraman (8/9) was the impressive player for the winning team playing in the third board. PSPB scorers were Abhijeet Gupta 3.5/5, Adhiban 5.5/8, Lalith Babu 7/8, Deep Sengupta 5/6.

The two narrow margin (2.5-1.5) wins for PSPB came in round three against LIC and Railways ‘A’ in the sixth round.

Powered by Saptarshi Roy’s 5.5/6 in the fifth board, Railway ‘B’ finished second. Others scorers: Thejkumar 4.5/7, Himanshu Sharma 5.5/8, Akshat Khamparia 6/8, Rathnakaran 4/7. They lost to PSPB by a wide margin 0.5-3.5 and drew their ‘A’ team and LIC to take second place.

Indian Railways ‘A’ finished third on better tie-break than LIC. They drew Air India, Railway ‘B’ and LIC, and lost one match to PSPB by 1.5-2.5.

Maharashtra finished ahead of all other state teams. The three Tamil Nadu teams suffered last round defeats and Maharashtra went ahead to be the best state team in the men’s event.

Air India wrested the women’s team title from Airports Authority of India by winning all seven matches. Air India defeated AAI by a narrow 2.5-1.5 score in an  earlier round (Tania Sachdev drew Harika, Bhakti Kulkarni bt Mary Ann Gomes, Vijayalakshmi bt Padmini Rout, Meenakshi lost to Bharathi).

The scorers for Air India were Tania Sachdev 5/6, Bhakti Kulkarni 4.5/7, Vijayalakshmi 6/6, S Meenakshi 3.5/5, Aarthie Ramaswamy 3/4.

Airports Authority of India was more impressive in scoring than Air India but lost the key match to Air India and beat the rest to take the second place.

Airports Authority of India finished second and they comprised of D Harika 1.5/2, Mary Ann Gomes 5/7, Padmini Rout 6/7, Nimmy George 4.5/5, R Bharathi 7/7.

Third place went to PSPB and their contributors were Rucha Pujari 4.5/6, Nisha Mohota 4.5/6, Soumya Swaminathan 4/6;

Woman FIDE Master R Bharathi of Chennai representing Airports Authority of India on board four was the most impressive player winning all seven games played.

Similarly, S Vijayalakshmi of Chennai representing champion team Air India was the best performer winning all six games.

Final placings (tie-break order):

Men: 1 PSPB 18; 2 Indian Railways ‘B’ 14; 3-4. Indian Railways ‘A’, LIC 13 each; 5-8. Airports Authority of India, The Empty, Air India, Maharashtra 12 each; 9-12. Kerala, Karnataka Silicos, Tamil Nadu ‘A’, Andhra Pradesh ‘A’ 11 each; 13-16. Tamil Nadu ‘C’, Tamil Nadu ‘B’, Andhra Bank, Punjab 10 each…43 teams.

Women: 1 Air India 14; 2 Airports Authority of India 12; 3 PSPB 10; 4-7. LIC, Tamil Nadu, AP Race, Punjab 8 each; 8-9. Gujarat, Bihar 7 each; 10 Goa 6…14 teams.