The Hindu : Sport : Negi finishes joint first

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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2008
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Negi finishes joint first

Manuel Aaron

— FILE PHOTO

Parimarjan Negi.

Philadelphia: India’s Parimarjan Negi finished joint first with Slovakian GM Lubomir Ftacnik, and East European GMs Alex Moiseenko and Evgeny Najer at the end of the ninth and final round of the Open section of the 36th World Open chess tournament on Monday.

Negi received $7,000 as his share of the prize money, which had been reduced by 20 per cent as the 11 sections of the tournament attracted less than 1450 players.

In the penultimate round, Negi was paired against GM Alexander Shabalov who had beaten Arun Prasad and Ganguly in the previous two rounds. Negi avenged those defeats by inflicting a fine victory over the French Defence of Shabalov.

In the ninth round, Negi and veteran Ftacnik played out a draw in under 10 minutes to reach 7 points each and allowed Moiseenko and Najer to catch up with them.

According to the rules of the tournament, the top two players by tie-break score — Negi and Najer — had to play a ‘Armageddon’ play-off game to decide who would be called the champion of the tournament and earn an additional $500.

In this game, Najer playing white had 7 minutes on his clock while Negi had only five. A draw would have counted as a victory for black. Najer won this game.

Ganguly, Arun Prasad and R.R. Laxman played well to finish on 6 points and got $426 each.

In the under 2400 section, Eesha Karavade dropped 1.5 points in the last two rounds to win only a minor prize.

Final point position of the Indians:

Open Section: P. Negi 7; S. Arun Prasad, S.S. Ganguly, R.R. Laxman 6 each; G.N. Gopal, K. Rathnakaran 5.5 each; A. Kunte 5; M.R. Venkatesh, Nisha Mohota, Swati Ghate 4.5 each; Kiran Mohanty 3.5.

Under-2400: Eesha Karavade, Saimeera Ravi 6 each; Aarthie Ramaswamy 4.

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