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Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008
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Sasikiran triumphs

K. Sasikiran

Chennai: India’s K. Sasikiran raced to one of his career best titles when he drew the final round game against Bulgarian Aleksander Delchev to win the City of Pamplona international chess tournament by an impressive one point margin in Spain on Monday.

Sasikiran, ranked World No. 35, gained nine Elo points from this tournament. He played at 2795 Elo and the result would take him into the 2700+ rating club once again.

Requiring a draw in the final round for his maiden title at Pamplona, Sasikiran played the Slav defence with the black pieces and earned a 46-move draw in a fully fought encounter against Delchev to finish on five points from seven games.

Sasikiran is expected to reach a career high rating in the January 2009 list mainly with gains from his good performance in the Croatian League which gave him 18.30 Elo points.

Final placings (tie-break order): 1. K. Sasikiran (Ind) 5/7; 2-3. V. Malakhov (Rus), Francisco Vallejo (Esp) 4 each; 4-5. F. Caruana (Ita), A. Delchev (Bul) 3.5 each; 6-7. M. Roiz (Isr), I. Nepomniachtchi (Rus) 3 each; 8 Ivan Salgado (Esp) 2. — Arvind Aaron

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