The Hindu : Laxman makes final IM-norm

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2004

Sport

Sport - Chess

Laxman makes final IM-norm

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15. R.R. Laxman's search for his final International Master norm ended with a round to spare with a clinical destruction of Nurlan Ibraev in the eighth round of the Parsvnath International chess tournament on Monday.

On a day when draws on the top four boards kept Pavel Kotsur and Saidali Iuldachev ahead while allowing defending champion R.B. Ramesh to come closer to the leaders following a comfortable victory, exciting games were at a premium. With three rounds to go, Kotsur and Iuldachev led with seven points. Seven players, including Ramesh, D.V. Prasad and C.S. Gokhale were in the second spot with 6.5 points each.

The Chennai-based 23-year-old Laxman, whose earlier norms came in the 1998 World junior championship at Kozhikode and this year's Commonwealth championship in Mumbai, needed just a draw today to reach his goal. Laxman, rated 2335, now needs to touch 2400 to become an International Master.

Among the Indian GMs who won, Humpy was lucky to post her first victory over K. Visweswaran, someone to whom she had lost three times in four meetings.

The results (eighth round): Serik Temirbaev (Kaz) (6.5) drew with Pavel Kotsur (Kaz) (7); R. Balasubramaniam (6.5) drew with Saidali Iuldachev (7); D. V. Prasad (6.5) drew with C.S. Gokhale (6.5); M.R. Venkatesh (6) drew with Surya Shekhar Ganguly (6); Shukhrat Safin (Uzb) (6.5) bt Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (5.5)

R.B. Ramesh (6.5) bt Neeraj Kumar Mishra (5.5); S. Satyapragyan (6) drew with Sriram Jha (6); Tejas Bakre (6) drew with Aminul Islam (Ban) (6); Nurlan Ibraev (Kaz) (5.5) lost to R.R. Laxman (6.5); Dibyendu Barua (6) bt Atanu Lahiri (5).

Laisram Imocha (5) lost to Sandipan Chanda (6); Koneru Humpy (6) bt K. Visweswaran (5); Pradeep Ghosh (5.5) drew with Neelotpal Das (5.5); Mohammad Javed (Ban) (5.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (5.5); P. Kartikeyan (5) lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy (6); P. Konguvel (6) bt Swati Ghate (5); T.S. Ravi (6) bt Abu Sufian Shakil (Ban) (5).

Anup Deshmukh (5.5) drew with Aarthie Ramaswamy (5.5); M. Srinivasa Rao (5) lost to C. Praveen Kumar (6); Georgy Timoshenko (Ukr) (5.5) bt Shekhar Sahu (4.5); Laltu Chatterjee (4.5) lost to Shashikant Kutwal (5.5); V. Saravanan (5.5) bt G. Balaji (4.5); R. Preetham Sharma (5) drew with Varugeese Koshy (5); Dinesh Kumar Sharma (5.5) bt Kanti Lal Dave (4.5).

Manthan Chokshi (5.5) bt S. Poobesh Anand (4.5); Gurpreet Pal Singh (5.5) bt Soumya Ranjan Mishra (4.5); P. Phoobalan (5) drew with Roktim Bandyopadhyay (5); Suvrajit Saha (5.5) bt Hariom Sharma (4.5); C.S. Unni (5) drew with Deep Sengupta (5); Somak Palit (5.5) bt Ram Prakash (4.5); S.C. Subramanium (4.5) lost to N. Sudhakar Babu (5.5).

Vikramaditya Kamble (4.5) lost to Amit Kumar Medda (5.5); Arman Monir (Ban) (4.5) lost to Arghyadip Das (5.5); Devraj Chatterjee (Ban) (5) drew with Dronavalli Harika (5); Martin Haag (Ger) (5) drew with Y. Sandeep (5); G.B. Joshi (5.5) bt Hemant Kumar Mandhre (4.5); V.A.V. Rajesh (4.5) lost to K. Rathnakaran (5.5); R. Weerawardane (Sri) (4.5) lost to Himanshu Sharma (5.5).

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