The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Abhijeet and Ravi gain GM norms

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 17, 2006

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Sport - Chess

Abhijeet and Ravi gain GM norms

NEW DELHI: Abhijeet Gupta and Lanka Ravi kept their dates with Grandmaster norms in contrasting styles and S.P. Sethuraman gained his maiden International Master norm on the concluding day of the Andorra International Open chess tournament on Sunday.

Abhijeet (6.5 points), after drawing his eighth round game on Saturday, needed nothing less a victory in the ninth and final round over lowly-rated Israel's Sasha Kaplan to make his maiden GM norm.

Ravi lost the final round but eventually the high average rating of his opponents was enough to ensure the norm. His maiden seven-game norm came in the 2003 Asian Team Championship at Jodhpur.

It was also a memorable day for 13-year-old Sethuraman (6) who raised visions of a possible GM norm on way to his maiden IM norm.

Meanwhile, in the Benasque Open in Spain, Tania Sachdev finished with six points from 10 rounds after drawing the final round with Spain's Valentin Cantin Zoborras.

The results (involving Indians):

At Andorra La Vella (ninth round): Lanka Ravi (6) lost to Maxim Rodshtein (Isr, 6.5); Sasha Kaplan (Isr, 5.5) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (6.5); S. Satyapragyan (5) lost to Viktor Moskalenko (Ukr, 6); P. Konguvel (5) lost to Josep Oms Pallise (And, 6); Jose Fernandez Garcia (Esp, 5.5) drew with Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (5.5); Rui Damaso (Por, 5) lost to S.P. Sethuraman (6); Saptarshi Roy (5) lost to Jesus De La Villa Garcia (6); Roi Reinaldo Casteineria (Esp, 5.5) bt Dinesh Sharma (4.5); Abhyudaya Rajpurohit (4.5) lost to Francisco Sanz Alonso (Esp, 5.5); Jordi Blas Correa (Esp, 5) drew with Vishal Sareen (5); G.N. Gopal (4.5) drew with S. Kidambi (4.5); Eesha Karavade (4.5) bt Sahaj Grover (4); Gurpreet Pal Singh (4.5) bt Maria Tanco Salas (3.5); Kruttika Nadig (4) bt Antonio Gomez (And, 3). Eighth round: Ravi drew with Fernando Peralta (Arg, 6); Igor Khenkin (Ger, 6) bt Satyapragyan; Abhijeet drew with Diego Flores (Arg, 5); Sethuraman drew with Jose Luis Fernandez Garcia (Esp, 5); Kidambi lost to Chowdhury; Dinesh drew with Jose Carlos Ibarra Jerez (4.5); Patxi Gallego Eraso (Esp, 4) lost to Konguvel; Sareen drew with Rajpurohit; David Recuero Guerro (Esp, 3.5) lost to Roy; Ruslan Pogorelov (Ukr, 4.5) bt Eesha; Leonardo Nunes (Por, 3.5) lost to Bandyopadhyay; Boris Bruned (Esp, 4) drew with Gopal; Javier Vila Gazquez (Esp, 4.5) bt Gurpreet Pal; Grover bt Kruttika.

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