The seventh round of the National Championship saw a truly unique game with a unique finish. It was so unique that even the world class GM Anish Giri tweeted:
That's Indian Tal for you. @ChessbaseIndia
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) December 12, 2018
Anish was referring to a video that was created by us with Ratnakaran at the IIFLW tournament in January 2018 where we had called the Railways IM as the Indian Tal.
Sagar Shah with Ratnakaran and they are joined by GM Abhijeet Gupta as well
It was the game between the Indian Tal K. Ratnakaran and the recently minted Indian GM P. Karthikeyan. Karthikeyan was better for the most part of the game and in the end he even won some material.
Ratnakaran vs P. Karthikeyan
Black has just made a queen and it seem as if White is busted. But Ratnakaran didn't give up. He pushed his pawn on the kingside...
But two pawns and a knight can surely not overpower a queen and rook, right? Wrong!
Ratnakaran played Nf3+ and the players agreed to a draw. In fact it is Black who needs to be careful here because White has ideas of getting his king to h7 and queening, or using the knight to control the f8 square.
It's not without reason that we caall him the Indian tTal! | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Standings after round 7:
| Rk. | SNo | Name | FED | Rtg | Club/City | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | |
| 1 | 4 | GM | Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. | IND | 2584 | TN | 6,0 | 0,5 | 29,5 | 32,0 |
| 2 | 13 | GM | Anurag Mhamal | IND | 2491 | GOA | 6,0 | 0,5 | 28,5 | 31,5 |
| 3 | 5 | GM | Sengupta Deep | IND | 2565 | PSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 29,5 | 33,0 |
| 4 | 3 | GM | Vaibhav Suri | IND | 2589 | PSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 32,0 |
| 5 | 12 | IM | Stany G.A. | IND | 2509 | AAI | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 31,5 |
| 6 | 34 | Sammed Jaykumar Shete | IND | 2378 | MAH | 5,5 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 30,0 | |
| 7 | 10 | GM | Vishnu Prasanna. V | IND | 2518 | TN | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,5 | 29,0 |
| 8 | 66 | Harshavardhan G B | IND | 2163 | TN | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,0 | 29,0 | |
| 9 | 14 | GM | Swapnil S. Dhopade | IND | 2490 | RSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,0 | 29,0 |
| 10 | 33 | IM | Rahul Srivatshav P | IND | 2379 | TEL | 5,0 | 0,0 | 30,5 | 33,5 |
| 11 | 7 | GM | Deepan Chakkravarthy J. | IND | 2550 | RSPB | 5,0 | 0,0 | 29,5 | 32,0 |
| 12 | 1 | GM | Gupta Abhijeet | IND | 2597 | PSPB | 5,0 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 31,0 |
| 13 | 39 | Ritviz Parab | IND | 2338 | GOA | 5,0 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 30,5 | |
| 14 | 27 | GM | Thipsay Praveen M | IND | 2400 | MAH | 5,0 | 0,0 | 28,0 | 30,5 |
| 15 | 25 | GM | Neelotpal Das | IND | 2412 | PSPB | 5,0 | 0,0 | 27,5 | 30,0 |
| 16 | 36 | IM | Rathnakaran K. | IND | 2366 | RSPB | 5,0 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 30,0 |
| 17 | 15 | IM | Karthikeyan P. | IND | 2482 | RSPB | 5,0 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 30,0 |
| 18 | 55 | FM | Navalgund Niranjan | IND | 2240 | KAR | 5,0 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 29,5 |
| 19 | 18 | IM | Vignesh N R | IND | 2455 | TN | 5,0 | 0,0 | 26,0 | 29,5 |
| 20 | 22 | IM | Akash G | IND | 2443 | TN | 5,0 | 0,0 | 25,5 | 28,5 |
Aravindh Chithambaram is one of the joint leaders with 6.0/7 | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Anurag Mhamal from Goa is the other joint leader
