The Hindu : Sport : Abhijeet Gupta becomes 17th GM

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Monday, Dec 10, 2007
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Abhijeet Gupta becomes 17th GM

Rakesh Rao

It rains norms in penultimate round

— Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

PROUD MOMENT: Coach Vishal Sareen poses with his wards Abhijeet Gupta (left) and Sahaj Grover, who received their GM and IM norms respectively.

NEW DELHI: India found its 17th Grandmaster in Abhijeet Gupta as it rained norms in the ninth and penultimate round of the Parvsnath Commonwealth chess championship at the Siri Fort Sports Complex here on Sunday.

Before keen battles on the leading boards left four leaders — K. Ratnakaran, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Vikramaditya Kamble and R. B. Ramesh — 18-year-old Abhijeet met the technical requirements to become a GM.

Having already made three GM norms, Abhijeet needed to touch the stipulated rating of 2500 for the title. Rated at 2470 on October 1 this year, Abhijeet collected 25 points from the National junior championship at Aurangabad, World juniors in Armenia and the Aurangabad Open in his recent outings. That left him needing another five points to touch 2500 here.

Abhijeet’s victory over Abhishek Das took his rating-gain from nine rounds to 6.5 points, thus taking his rating past the required mark. This Bhilwara-boy’s GM title is likely to be confirmed later this month and published in the next world rating list on January 1.

Maiden GM norm

M.S. Thej Kumar, who made his International Master norm on Saturday, enhanced it to his maiden GM norm by beating GM Tejas Bakre.

Former World under-10 champion Sahaj Grover gave another evidence of his potential by earning an IM-norm in his pre-teen years. The 12-year-old made it in style by stunning Woman Grandmaster Eesha Karavade.

Another youngster P. Karthikeyan also made his IM norm by beating Deep Sengupta. Former National women champion Nisha Mohota picked up her IM in spite of losing to Vikramaditya Kamble while Amruta Mokal collected a Woman IM norm after drawing with Aarthie Ramaswamy.

Second loss for Thipsay

Shashikant Kutwal surprised GM Pravin Thipsay for his IM norm. Surprisingly, this was Thipsay’s second straight loss.

Thipsay was not the only GM to lose. Second seed Gawain Jones, Parimarjan Negi and Deepan Chakkravarthy were the others to suffer defeats.

D. Harika overpowered the seasoned Pakistani IM Mahmood Lodhi to regain the lead among the ladies.

The results (Indians unless stated): Ninth round:

Sriram Jha (6.5) drew with K. Ratnakaran (7.5); Himanshu Sharma (6.5) lost to Surya Shekhar Ganguly (7.5); Nisha Mohota ( 6.5) lost to Vikramaditya Kamble (7.5); Gawain Jones (Eng) (6.5) lost to R. B. Ramesh (7.5); Abhijit Kunte (6.5) drew with S. Kidambi (6.5); P. Konguvel (6.5) drew with Abdullah Al-Rakib (6.5); Mahmood Lodhi (Pak) (6) lost to D. Harika (7); Abhishek Das (6) lost to Abhjijeet Gupta (7); M.S. Thej Kumar (7) bt Tejas Bakre (6); P. Karthikeyan (7) bt Deep Sengupta (6); Parimarjan Negi ( 5.5) lost to Mas Hafizulhelmi (Mal) (6.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (5.5) lost to R.R. Laxman (6.5); Neelotpal Das (6.5) bt C. S. Gokhale (5.5); Lanka Ravi (5.5) lost to Reefat Bin Sattar (Ban) (6.5); Pravin Thipsay (5.5) lost to Shashikant Kutwal ( 6.5); Rahul Sangma (5.5) lost to M. R. Venkatesh (6.5); P. D. S. Girinath (6) drew with Nassir Wajih (6).

Niaz Murshed (Ban) (6.5) bt Tunveer Gillani (Pak) (5.5); S. Arun Prasad (6.5) bt J. Ramakrishna (5.5); Aleksandar Wohl (Aus) ( 6.5) bt Bitan Banerjee (5.5); R. Premnath (5.5) lost to Tania Sachdev (6.5); D. V. Prasad (6) drew with Soumya Swaminathan (6); Prasenjit Datta (5) lost to Dibyendu Barua (6); G. Rohit (6) bt Rahul Shetty (5); Vinay Kumar Matta (5) lost to Aswin Jayaram (6); Ravi Hegde (5) lost to David Smerdon (Aus) (6); Mary Ann Gomes ( 5.5) drew with Aminul Islam (Ban) (5.5); Dinesh Kumar Sharma (5.5) drew with Shyam Nikhil (5.5); V. Saravanan (5.5) drew Krishnan Saravana (5.5); Roktim Bandyopadhyay (5) lost to Swapnil Dhopade (6).

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