Abhijeet wins, Sasikiran loses again in Corus Chess
From Our Chess Correspondent ]
Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands)
Jan 28 (PTI)
On a mixed day for the Indians, world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta came back into reckoning for top honours with a ninth-round win in ‘C’ group but K Sasikiran suffered a defeat in the ‘B’ group of the Corus International Chess Tournament here.
Abhijeet scored a fine positional triumph over veteran Grandmaster Oleg Romanishin of Ukraine but Sasikiran lost to David Navara of Czech Republic.
Abhijeet took his tally to a respectable 5.5 points out of a possible nine and is now in joint third position along side Frank Holzke of Germany and David Howell of England.
The lead position remained unchanged after Tiger Hillarp Persson of Sweden played out a draw with D Harika and inched himself up to 6.5 points.
The second place is held by Wesley So of Philippines who made short work of local hopeful Ali Bitalzadeh.
In the ‘B’ group Sasikiran will look forward to saving some of the vital elo points. The Indian has three points and is playing much below his expected score.
Abhijeet played his moves well to beat the experienced Romanishin. Expectedly the Ukrainian employed the Nimzo Indian and faced the Capablanca variation.
Abhijeet got a bind in the center and slowly his pieces gained in strength. Romanishin opted to go for an inferior endgame to cut down on some pressure but ended up losing a pawn for effectively no compensation.
Playing the black side of a Sicilian closed, Sasikiran went for a bloody battle which was expected from his dismal play thus far. The top seeded Indian has been struggling in the event and the ninth round was different as Navara caught Sasi unawares in a highly tactical game. PTI
Great blog. Very interesting. Greetings from Spain