We left you at the end of round 4 at the inter-unit PSPB Championship 2017. ONGC was tied with IOCL with 7 points. However, there was a very important caveat. ONGC had played with both the strong teams IOCL and BPCL while IOCL had yet to play against BPCL. That's the match which everyone was looking forward to in round five.
| Round 5 on 2017/12/22 at 10:00 am |
| Bo. | 2 | BPCL | Rtg | - | 3 | IOCL-A | Rtg | 2 : 2 |
| 1.1 | GM | | 2744 | - | GM | | 2542 | 1 - 0 |
| 1.2 | GM | | 2593 | - | GM | | 2655 | 0 - 1 |
| 1.3 | GM | | 2542 | - | GM | | 2650 | 0 - 1 |
| 1.4 | GM | | 2610 | - | GM | | 2499 | 1 - 0 |
The second and third boards fired for IOCL but boards one and four were just too strong in BPCL. The match ended in a well fought 2-2 draw.
The match between Hari and Lalith. White has a definite edge thanks to is better pawn structure. | Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Lalith is in great form after winning the national title, but facing Harikrishna never easy!
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Soon a huge crowd gathered as IOCL's title chances hinged on this game
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Hari ensured a victory for BPCL and thus leveled the scores, easing out the path for ONGC to win the title!
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Adhiban managed to get the better of G.N. Gopal
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Vaibhav Suri lost to Surya Shekhar Ganguly
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Abhijit Kunte could not hold Abhijeet Gupta
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
ONGC-A as expected beat their opponents 4-0. In match points ONGC moved to 9.0/10, IOCL with two draws was on 8.0/10 and BPCL with one draw and one loss on 7.0/10.
Round 5 results
| Round 5 on 2017/12/22 at 10:00 am |
| No. | Team | Team | Res. | : | Res. |
| 1 | BPCL | IOCL-A | 2 | : | 2 |
| 2 | ONGC-A | MRPL | 4 | : | 0 |
| 3 | ONGC-B | HPCL-A | 3½ | : | ½ |
| 4 | OIL-INDIA_A | IOCL-B | 1 | : | 3 |
| 5 | HPCL-B | IOCL(AOD)-B | 3½ | : | ½ |
| 6 | IOCL(AOD)-A | EIL | ½ | : | 3½ |
| 7 | OIL-INDIA_B | NRL | 4 | : | 0 |
Round 6 results
| Round 6 on 2017/12/22 at 03:00 pm |
| No. | Team | Team | Res. | : | Res. |
| 1 | ONGC-B | ONGC-A | 1 | : | 3 |
| 2 | IOCL-B | IOCL-A | 1½ | : | 2½ |
| 3 | HPCL-B | BPCL | 0 | : | 4 |
| 4 | MRPL | OIL-INDIA_A | 1 | : | 3 |
| 5 | HPCL-A | OIL-INDIA_B | 3 | : | 1 |
| 6 | EIL | NRL | 4 | : | 0 |
| 7 | IOCL(AOD)-B | IOCL(AOD)-A | 2½ | : | 1½ |
The sixth round proved to be much more interesting than one would have imagined. Neelotpal Das and Konguvel representing ONGC-B held Sasikiran and Deep Sengupta respectively.
ONGC-B did give ONGC-A a tough fight, but in the end boards three and four of the A team (Sethuraman and Debashis Das) scored the crucial wins and helped ONGC - A win not only the match but also the title!
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
| Bo. | 5 | ONGC-B | Rtg | - | 1 | ONGC-A | Rtg | 1 : 3 |
| 1.1 | GM | | 2468 | - | GM | | 2680 | ½ - ½ |
| 1.2 | IM | | 2378 | - | GM | | 2586 | ½ - ½ |
| 1.3 | IM | | 2167 | - | GM | | 2646 | 0 - 1 |
| 1.4 | | | 1929 | - | GM | | 2501 | 0 - 1 |
IOCL-A against IOCL-B could have gone either way. Three boards ended in draws. Soumya Swaminathan drew against Lalith Babu, Mary Ann Gomes drew her game against Karthikeyan Murali and D.V. Prasad held Abhijit Kunte. It was Adhiban's win over Padmini Rout that gave IOCL-A the victory and the second spot.
Soumya drew her game against Lalith
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Mary didn't give any chances to Karthikeyan
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
Padmini Rout lost to Adhiban.
| Photo: IA Vasanth B.H.
| Bo. | 4 | IOCL-B | Rtg | - | 3 | IOCL-A | Rtg | 1½:2½ |
| 2.1 | WGM | | 2356 | - | GM | | 2542 | ½ - ½ |
| 2.2 | IM | | 2324 | - | GM | | 2655 | 0 - 1 |
| 2.3 | WGM | | 2333 | - | GM | | 2580 | ½ - ½ |
| 2.4 | IM | | 2284 | - | GM | | 2499 | ½ - ½ |
Final Ranking after 6 Rounds
| Rk. | SNo | Team | Games | + | = | - | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 |
| 1 | 1 | ONGC-A | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 11 | 19,0 | 0 |
| 2 | 3 | IOCL-A | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 18,5 | 0 |
| 3 | 2 | BPCL | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 19,0 | 0 |
| 4 | 4 | IOCL-B | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 15,5 | 0 |
| 5 | 5 | ONGC-B | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 14,0 | 0 |
| 6 | 8 | HPCL-A | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 11,5 | 0 |
| 7 | 10 | EIL | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 12,5 | 0 |
| 8 | 6 | OIL-INDIA_A | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 11,5 | 0 |
| 9 | 11 | HPCL-B | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 10,5 | 0 |
| 10 | 7 | MRPL | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 9,5 | 0 |
| 11 | 9 | OIL-INDIA_B | 6 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 9,5 | 0 |
| 12 | 13 | IOCL(AOD)-B | 6 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 8,0 | 0 |
| 13 | 12 | IOCL(AOD)-A | 6 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 6,5 | 0 |
| 14 | 14 | NRL | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 2,5 | 0 |
A huge thanks to chief arbiter Vasanth B.H. for sending pictures to ChessBase India
