The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Negi ends 16th

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 08, 2006

Sport

Sport - Chess

Negi ends 16th

NEW DELHI: Parimarjan Negi surrendered to top seeded Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Belov in 44 moves in the 10th and final round of the Hastings Masters chess tournament in Hastings, United Kingdom, on Friday.

The 12-year-old, who achieved his International Master title and the first Grandmaster norm this week, finished with six points. He tied for the 16th spot with eight others.

Commendably, the 26th seeded Negi faced eight GMs and one IM in the championship and lost only to the eventual champion Ukraine's Valerij Neverov (8 points) and the favourite Belov (7), whose ratings of 2569 and 2620 respectively, were way ahead of the youngster's 2352.

Among the GMs, Negi's victims included Israel's Sergey Erenburg (2582), England's Mark Hebden (2514) and Croatia's Lalic Bogdan (2489). He drew with other GMs like Ukraine's Yuriy Kuzubov (2541), Serbia's Milos Pavlovic (2507) and Scotland's Colin McNab (2456) besides French IM Jean-Pierre le Roux (2497).

Significantly, the average rating of Negi's rivals was a whopping 2498 — the highest in the competition — and his performance earned the youngster 45 rating points.

Gurpreet Pal Singh ended with 5.5 points and his trainee, the World under-10 boys champion Sahaj Grover tallied four points.

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