Four Indians attain IM norms, Negi loses
Tue, 18 May 2010
It was a mixed day for Indian participants in the ongoing Parsvnath Commonwealth chess championship here on Monday, with several youngsters moving ahead in their search for international recognition while established names suffered drawbacks.
Local hope Parimarjan Negi’s title hopes suffered a big jolt as he slumped to a second consecutive defeat against Argentinean GM Pablo Lafuente in the 10th round of the competition.
Playing with black pieces, Lafuente took only 28 moves in French Defence to outwit the second seeded Indian Grandmaster.
However, the day turned out to be a happy one for Indian norm seekers, with as many as four Indian players achieving International Master norms.
Gurpreet Pal Singh and S Nitin achieved their first International Master norms by settling for half points each against India’s Sahaj Grover and Russian Dmitry Kokarev respectively.
Prasanna Rao held former national champion Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte to get his third and final International Master norm while Sayantan Das beat seasoned campaigner BS Shivananda in the 10th round to attain the distinction.
Meanwhile, overnight sole leader Grandmaster Maletin Pavel of Russia maintained his lead after settling for a draw with fellow Russian Dmitry Bocharov. A pack of five players, including former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta, Grandmaster RR Laxman and International Master Lalith Babu, are on joint second spot with eight points each.
Abhijeet and Lalith beat Ashwin Jayaram and Girish A Koushik in the 10th round while Laxman got better off Matta Vinay Kumar.
In the final round on Tuesday, Maletin will take on Lalith Babu while Abhijeet Gupta and Laxman are paired with Dmitry Bocharov and Pablo Lafunete respectively.
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com
Has Negi stopped improving?