The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Indians come into their own

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Thursday, Sep 03, 2009
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Indians come into their own

KOLKATA: Indian players came into their own in the second round of the fourth Kolkata Open chess tournament at the Gorky Sadan on Wednesday.

Leading the onslaught against the GMs were International Masters Himanshu Sharma, Fide Masters Sahaj Grover and Vidit Santosh Gujarathi and the untitled Arjun Tiwari who won their games in a facile manner.

There were as many as nine Indians who held GMs to a draw. And the most celebrated was Sriram Jha holding the top seed and super GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan on the top board.

Fifteen with two points were jointly in lead while 25 followed them half a point behind.

In an interesting game, Gujarathi played solidly in a Modern Benoni Knight a6 system. In an equal position, GM Geetha Narayanan Gopal played a dubious move Nd2 which allowed Gujarathi a Bishop pair advantage.

The 14-year-old Nashik boy won a pawn and steered the game in to an opposite colour Bishop ending with two passed pawns on the ‘a’ and ‘b’ files which decided the issue in 58 moves.

Tiwari surprised GM Neelotpal Das in another game. The results (Top 15 boards): Sriram Jha (Ind, 1.5) drew with Mamedyarov Shakhriyar (Aze, 1.5); Nigel Short (Eng, 2) bt Petr Kostenko (Kaz, 1); Deep Sengupta (Ind, 1.5) drew with Gadir Guseinov (Aze, 1.5), B. Adhiban (Ind, 1.5) drew with Aleksej Aleksandrov Aleksej (Blr, 1.5); S.S. Ganguly (Ind, 2) bt R.R. Laxman (Ind, 1).

Himanshu Sharma (Ind, 2) bt Viktor Laznicka (Cze, 1); Rauf Mamedov Rauf (Aze, 2) bt M.S. Thejkumar (Ind, 1); Mikheil Mchedlishvili Mikheil (Geo, 1.5) drew P. Konguvel (Ind, 1.5); S. Satyapragyan (Ind, 1) lost to Sandipan Chanda (Ind, 2).

Le Quang Liem (Vie, 1.5) drew with Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (Ind, 1.5); Vidit Santosh Gujarathi (Ind, 2) bt Geetha Narayanan Gopal (Ind, 1); P. Shyam Nikil (Ind, 1) lost to Safarli Eltaj (Aze, 2).

Abhijeet Gupta (Ind, 2) bt Saptarshi Roy (Ind, 1); Swapnil S. Dhopade (Ind, 1.5) drew with Hillarp Persson Tiger (Swe, 1.5); Vadim Malakhatko (Bel, 2) bt Somak Palit (Ind, 1). — Special Correspondent

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