The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Ganguly stops Gopal in tiebreak, retains title

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Saturday, Sep 01, 2007
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Sport - Chess

Ganguly stops Gopal in tiebreak, retains title

NEW DELHI: Surya Shekhar Ganguly retained the Asian Zonal chess title after winning the two tiebreak rapid games against G.N. Gopal in Dhaka on Friday.

The title also gives the four-time National champion Ganguly a place in the World Cup at Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, from November 24 to December 16.

In the 11th and final round, Ganguly defeated Nepal’s Keshav Shrestha to reach nine points.

Gopal matched the tally by scoring over Bangladesh’s Reefat Bin Sattar with black pieces.

G. Rohit took the third spot with eight points.

For Gopal and Rohit, their performances helped them pick up their final Grandmaster norms.

Gopal made a 11-game norm to go with the norms made in Kolkata International and the Lake Sevan event in Armenia this year.

Rohit collected a nine-game norm, his third this year after his success in the Parsvnath International here and the Aeroflot Open in Moscow.

Rohit and Gopal need to touch the rating of 2500 for the GM title.

Among the ladies, D. Harika (seven points) won the five-player double-round event. Swati Ghate (6). Tania Sachdev (5.5) came second and third, respectively, on Wednesday.

Meanwhile in the NH tournament in Amsterdam, Rising Stars maintained its two-point lead after holding Experience 2.5-2.5 in the eighth round on Thursday.

The results (eighth round): Rising Stars (21) drew with Experience (19) 1.5-2.5 (Daniel Stellwagen drew with Alexander Beliavsky; Ivan Cheparinov lost to Predrag Nikolic; Sergey Karjakin drew with Alexander Khalifman; Parimarjan Negi d rew with Artur Jussupow; Jan Smeets bt Ljubomir Ljubojevic).

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