Commonwealth champion Abhijeet Gupta stunned Vassily Ivanchuk in 34 moves and S. P. Sethuraman delivered a serious blow to the Grandmaster-norm chances of R. Praggnanandha on way to the joint fifth spot after the eighth round of Tradewise Gibraltar Masters chess tournament here on Tuesday.
Young Nihal Sarin shocked Bulgarian GM Kiril Georgiev, Sandipan Chanda exceeded expectations in holding England’s Michael Adams and Swapnil
Dhopade proved equal to Nigel Short.
However, P. Hari Krishna suffered a second defeat after running into Israel’s Victor Michaelevski. GM-norm aspirant Prithu Gupta’s unbeaten run ended at the hands of Czech Republic’s Peter Michalik.
With two rounds to go, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Hikaru Nakamura – seeded two and three – shared the lead with Richard Rapport and Daniil Dubov at 6.5 points.
Eighth-round results (involving Indians):
Abhijeet Gupta (6) bt Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 5); S. L. Narayanan (5.5)
drew with Jan-Krzysztof (Pol, 5.5); Michal Adams (Eng, 5.5) drew with
Sandipan Chanda (5.5); S. P. Sethuraman (6) bt R. Praggnanandha (5);
Victor Michaelevski (Isr, 5.5) bt P. Hari Krishna (4.5); Ivan
Cheparinov (Bul, 5.5) bt M. R. Lalit Babu (4.5); Nigel Short (Eng, 5)
drew with Swapnil Dhopade (5); Nihal Sarin (5.5) bt Kiril Georgiev
(Bul, 4.5); Debashis Das (5) drew with Rainer Buhmann (Ger, 5); Anna
Muzychuk (Ukr, 5) drew with M. R. Venkatesh (5); Prithu Gupta (4.5)
lost to Peter Michalik (Cze, 5.5); G. N. Gopal (5) bt Pinto Paolo
Ladron de Guevara (Esp, 4); Dmitrij Kollars (Ger, 4.5) drew with
Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh (4.5); Lilit Mkrtchian (Arm, 4) lost to
Shardul Gagare (5); Bela Khotenashvili (4.5) drew with Hemant Sharma
(4.5); Xu Yi (Chn, 5) bt Raunak Sadhwani (4); Nieto David Larino (Esp,
5) bt Nisha Mohota (4); Lopez Juan Manual Bellon (Swe, 4) lost to
Prasanna Rao (5); Padmini Rout (4.5) bt David Gavrilescu (Rou, 3.5);
Alarcon Andres Merario (Esp, 4) drew with Swayams Mishra (4); Harshit
Raja (4.5) bt Diaz Mario Gavilan (Esp, 3.5); Irine Kharisma Sukandar
(Ina, 4) drew with P. V. Nandhidhaa (4); Andras Meszaros (Hun, 4) bt
C. Sahajasri (3); Victor Plotkin (Can, 4) bt Tejaswini Sagar (3);
Shalmali Gagare (3.5) drew with Caracuel Ignacio Barraza (Esp, 2.5);
Mayank Pal (2.5) drew with Graham Bolt (Eng, 2); D. Alan Gravett (Eng,
2.5) bt Dev Shah (1.5).
