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Sport - Chess

Laxman, Areshchenko share lead

Rakesh Rao

GURGAON: Given R.R. Laxman’s versatility, it is ironic that his results often fall short of reflecting the latent class he possesses. This maverick campaigner’s inconsistency has much to with it but nothing stops him from making things happen over a chessboard.

Tuesday was one such day when Laxman got everything right to annihilate third seed Yuri Solodovnichenko for a share of the lead in the Gurgaon International Open chess tournament here.

Laxman, the reigning National under-25 champion raced away to a 48-move victory to join overnight leader Alexander Areshchenko at seven points after the Ukrainian drew with his second-seeded compatriot Yuriy Kuzubov in just four moves. Following the leaders are six players at 6.5 points.

Shyam, Srinath impress

Noticeably, Tamil Nadu’s two teenaged IMs, M. Shyam Sundar and N. Srinath, came up with determined efforts to draw with strong Grandmasters.

Shyam needed 25 moves to hold fourth-seeded Russian Evgeny Gleizerov before Srinath pulled off a similar result in 72 moves against sixth seed Kazakh Anuar Ismagambetov.

Memorable

The day became memorable for young P. Saravana Krishna and the experienced B.S. Shivananda after they ensured their International Master norms irrespective of their ninth-round results.

Saravana, who has beaten three GMs so far in the competition, drew with Prathamesh Mokal while Shivananda made it in spite of losing to the seventh seeded GM Uzbek Saidali Iuldachev.

The results (Indians unless stated): Eighth round: Alexander Areshchenko (Ukr, 7) drew with Yuriy Kuzubov (Ukr, 6.5); Yuri Solodovnichenko (Ukr, 6) lost to R.R. Laxman (7); Deep Sengupta (6.5) drew with Neelotpal Das (6.5); M. Shyam Sundar (6) drew with Evgeny Gleizerov (Rus, 6); Abhijit Kunte (6) drew with Himanshu Sharma (6); N. Srinath (6) drew with Anuar Ismagambetov (Kaz, 6); Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb, 6.5) bt B.S. Shivananda (5.5); Mikhail Ulibin (Rus, 6.5) bt Rahul Sangma (5.5); Anwesh Upadhyaya (6.5) bt M.R. Lalith Babu (5.5).

B.T. Murali Krishna (6) drew with Shashikant Kutwal (6); Sokhib Djuraev (Tjk, 6) bt B. Adhiban (5); P. Magesh Chandran (5.5) drew with Soumya Swaminathan (5.5); P. Konguvel (5.5) drew with R. Premnath (5.5); Navin Kanna (6) bt Justin Sarkar (USA, 5); Soumyaranjan Mishra (5) lost to Niaz Murshed (Ban, 6); Sagar Shah (6) bt M.S. Thejkumar (5); S.P. Sethuraman (6) bt R. Balasubramanium (5); T. Purushothaman (5.5) drew with Saptarshi Roy (5.5); Nurlan Ibrayev (Kaz, 6) bt Arindam Mukherjee (5); Arghyadip Das (6) bt Shreyansh Daklia (5); Arjun Tiwari (5) lost to P.D.S. Girinath (6); Vikamjit Singh (5.5) drew with Akshayraj Kore (5.5); Prathamesh Mokal (5.5) drew with P. Saravana Krishna (5.5); Mehar Chinna Reddy (6) bt Debashis Das (5); C. Praveen Kumar (5.5) drew with Vaibhav Suri (5.5).

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