The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Sasikiran loses again

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 18, 2005

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Sport - Chess

Sasikiran loses again

MOSCOW, FEB. 17 . Grandmaster Tejas Bakre emerged as the only winner on an otherwise average day for Indians in the second round of the Aeroflot International Open chess tournament here.

In the top group `A1', Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran suffered his second straight loss against Ukrainian Grandmaster Alexander Areshchenko in less than two weeks after going down against the latter in the final round of the recently concluded Gibraltar chess festival.

Grandmaster and National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly showed controlled aggression and eventually drew with veteran GM Rafael Vaganian of Armenia. In the same group, GM Sandipan Chanda also signed peace with another Armenian GM Karen Asrian.

With seven rounds still remaining, six players emerged as joint leaders with a perfect score.

They are Ni Hua of China, Russians Sergey Volkov, Aleksei Loguvoi and Andrei Kharlov and Ukrainians Vassily Ivanchuk and Areschenko.

In the `A2', there was some good news for Indian contingent as Bakre defeated Andrey Kirusha of Russia. Having drawn the first round, Bakre displayed fine attacking skills to nudge himself up to 1.5 points from two games. As many as 17 players share the lead in this section.

In the same group, former Asian junior girls champion Tania Sachdev went down fighting against Sergei Dyachkov of Russia.

Losing their second game on the trot was Women Grandmaster Eesha Karvade and IM S. Kidambi, who found tough customers in Mikhail Klenburg of Ukraine and Wei Chenpeng of China respectively.

Young IM-norm holder Parimarjan Negi got a bye but simultaneously his IM norm prospects suffered a huge setback, as this full point will go as an un-played game.

In the `B' group, lone Indian IM Dinesh Kumar Sharma also suffered a reversal at the hands of Selim Gurcan of Turkmenistan. — PTI

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