Grandmaster Deep Sengupta caused the biggest upset in the eighth round of Rose Valley open International chess tournament defeating top rated Radoslav Wojtaszek of Poland here at Gorky Sadan.
It was a pretty tense game and in the words of Sengupta himself, “Radoslav tried too hard”, and had today the price for his overambitious play.
The victory landed Sengupta in a five-way lead at the top on six points after Vidit Gujarathi played out a solid draw with Ahmed Adly of Egypt at the top board.
Moldovan Grandmaster Viorel Iordachescu spoiled IM Swapnil Dhopade’s fantastic run. Dhopade still needs to get a draw in the ninth round tomorrow to be eligible for what would be his second Grandmaster norm.
Confirming another GM norm for himself, Vidit now shares the lead with Iordachescu, Sengupta, Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan and S P Sethuraman of India.
With just three rounds to come the battle is only expected to heat up with as many as seven players including second seed Anton Korobov having 5,5 points apiece.
The upset galore continued and a huge beneficiary of the day was S P Sethuraman who defeated local stalwart Surya Shekhar Ganguly. Sethuraman opted for the Advance variation in the French defense and it was an edge-of-the-seat battle in which Ganguly was the first to miss the thread to find himself in a lost endgame. Sethuraman made no mistakes and converted quite easily.
Apart from Ganguly another local star Sandipan Chanda also suffered a huge setback at the hands of Vishnu Prasanna who is now gunning for a Grandmaster norm.
Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev defeated G N Gopal in game that was supposed to be drawn but the latter tried hard to make a foray. Erstwhile sole leader Dzhumaev is back in lead with the victory and with the big names of the tournament still having some catching up to do, things can only become more exciting here at the Russian Center.
Deep built up a miniscule advantage against Sicilian Najdorf opening by Radek as Wojtaszek is fondly called. The Polish GM started to put some pressure and took this chance but Deep remained on his guard not giving many opportunities. In the end game, when the game appeared poised for a draw, Radek went all out for a win and this proved disastrous for the highest ranked player in the tournament.
The ninth round will also see many of the norms made from the tournament. There were as many as 18 contenders for a norm from here before the start of the eighth which is a record in itself and the ninth round will see fruition of many a dreams when the norms will be duly recorded.
That’s a huge upset.