Sunday, Jan 09, 2005
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By Rakesh Rao
NEW DELHI, JAN. 8. Needing a draw to attain the International Master title-norm, R. Balasubramanium faltered against Uzbek Anton Filippov in the ninth round of the Parsvnath International Open chess tournament here on Saturday. With two rounds to go, Grandmasters K. Sasikiran, Abhijit Kunte, R. B. Ramesh and Bangladesh's IM Enamul Hossain shared the lead with 7.5 points. Sasikiran and Kunte drew their ninth-round battle in just 15 moves before Ramesh proved superior to N. Sanjay and Hossain defeated K. Ratnakaran.. Earlier in the day, leader Sasikiran overlooked the loss of a crucial pawn against Hossain and eventually settled for a draw. Kunte joined Sasikiran at seven points after stopping youngster Deep Sengupta. Significantly, Sanjay, Ratnakaran and Preetham Sharma, all IM-norm hopefuls, needed to remain undefeated in the ninth round to inch closer to their goal. As a result of ending up on the losing side, these players will have to score heavily in the remaining rounds to gain the elusive IM norm. Among the ladies, Mary Ann Gomes remained on course for a Woman International Master norm with a victory over Malaysia's Siti Zulaikha. After six points from nine rounds, she now has to simply maintain her performance-rating to get her norm. The focus of the ninth round was undoubtedly on the match between Balasubramanium and Filippov. The 33-year-old from the Integral Coach Factory (Chennai) had gained IM norms from the two previous editions of the tournament here and was just half a point away from completing a hattrick of norms. However, the young Uzbek proved more than a handful for Balasubramanium in a rook and minor-piece ending. Balasubramanium will have to win on Sunday to make up for the lost opportunity. Ramesh, after losing the second round, scored his sixth victory in the last seven games to be among the leaders. Today, he stopped R. R. Laxman in the morning and then came out of a difficult middle-game situation to tame Sanjay.
Eighth round: Sasikiran drew with Hossain; Deep lost to Kunte; Fominyh drew with Satyapragyan; Filippov drew with Himanshu; Ramesh bt Laxman; Ratnakaran bt Dmitry; Saptarshi Roy bt Sai Srinivas; Muralidharan lost to Sanjay; Mehdi Hasan bt Barua; Sivanandan drew with Visweswaran; Sergey lost to Balasubramanium; Konguvel lost to Ramu; O. T. Anil Kumar lost to Girinath; Mokal bt Saurabh Kherdekar; Abhijeet Gupta drew with Thakur; S. P. Sethuraman lost to Choudhury; Prasad bt Chaitanya Vaidya; S. Arun Prasad bt M. R. Lalit Babu; Saravanan bt Y. Prathiba; M. Vinoth Kumar lost to Sudhir Kumar Sinha; Holmirzaev drew with Jayant Gokhale; Vikramaditya Sahu lost to Preetham; Vikrant Chole lost to C. S. Gokhale; Akshat Khamparia drew with Saha; Sareen bt Amardeep Bartakke.
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