Abhijeet Gupta is on a roll. With a late but clever manoeuvre, the third seed floored top seed Martyn Kravtsiv to regain his one-point lead in a dramatic seventh round of the Parsvnath Grandmasters International chess tournament here on Monday.
At the Ludlow Castle Indoor Complex, where Ankit Rajpara brought down second seed Levan Pantasulaia after M.R. Lalith Babu played out a 20-move draw with another Georgian Merab Gagunashvili, the Indians had a fairly good day.
Abhijeet’s sixth victory raised his tally to 6.5 points and pushed him a point ahead of a five-man pack at 5.5 points.
Kravtsiv and Abhijeet tested each other with the Ukrainian gradually seizing the advantage of space with a well-placed rook in the middle-game. Once Abhijeet brought his rook into play, Kravtsiv’s ambitious plans backfired. Abhijeet, armed with an extra pawn on the king’s side, clevered went for Kravtsiv’s last pawn. With both players playing with a rook each, Abhijeet pushed the lone pawn on the board to pull off a vital triumph in 57 moves.
The results (Indians unless stated):Seventh round: Martyn Kravtsiv (Ukr, 4.5) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (6.5); M.R. Lalith Babu (5.5) drew with Merab Gagunashvili (Geo, 5); Ankit Rajpara (5.5) bt Levan Pantasulaia (Geo, 4.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (5) drew with Deep Sengupta (5); M.R. Venkatesh (4.5) lost to Eldar Gasanov (Ukr, 5.5); Bobir Sattarov (Uzb, 5.5) bt Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 4.5); Valeriy Neverov (Ukr, 5.5) bt N. Vignesh (4.5); Alexander Evdokimov (Rus, 5) bt Raset Ziatdinov (USA, 4); Vaibhav Suri (5) bt K. Akshat (4); R. Siddharth (4) lost to John Paul Gomez (Phi, 5); P. Karthikeyan (4.5) drew with S. Arun Prasad (4.5); M. Karthikeyan (5) bt G.A. Stany (4): S. Nitin (4.5) drew with R.R. Laxman (4.5): Swayams Mishra (5) bt B. S. Shivananda (4); N. Visakh (4.5) drew with P. Shyamnikhil (4.5); N. Srinath (4.5) drew with V. Saravanan (4.5); Oliver Barbosa (Phi, 4.5) bt Arjun Tiwari (4); T. Sanikidze (Geo, 4) drew with Rahul Sangma (4); Sahaj Grover (4.5) bt Hemant Sharma (3.5); Padmini Rout (4) drew with Saptarshi Roy (3.5).
