Armed with plenty of pluck and a bit of luck, N. Srinath battled to a 83-move triumph over Peru’s Grandmaster Cristhian Cruz and joined three other leaders at six points after seven rounds of the Rs. 30-lakh Parsvnath Delhi International Open chess tournament here on Tuesday
After the overnight leaders Ukraine’s Andrey Baryshpolets and Russia’s Mikhail Mozharov drew in just 16 moves, second seed Ivan Popov tamed third-seeded Russian compatriot Anton Demchenko in 60 moves to share the lead for the first time.
Half a point behind the leaders were Sahaj Grover, Deepan Chakkravarthy, S. Nitin and Vietnamese Nguyen Van Huy.
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Top-seeded defending champion Abhijeet Gupta crashed to his second successive loss after facing K. Ratnakaran.
Srinath, a three-time Asian junior champion, held a clear advantage out of the opening that followed the Najdorf variation of SicilianDefence. However, he lost his way with a bishop move on the 16th turn and his advantage evaporated in quick time.
Having neutralised Srinath’s kingside offensive, Cruz enjoyed good counter-play.
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By the 39th move, the players were left with their bright-squared bishop and five pawns each.
For the next 40 moves, spread over 90 minutes, Srinath made his moves in the 30-second increment time.
He kept alive his chances and benefitted when Cruz overlooked the potential of his bishop-move on the 80th move.
Three moves later, with Srinath’s king-rook pawn a step away from ‘queening’, Cruz gave up.
S. Ravi Teja and Navalgund Niranjan scored over Grandmasters Eldar Gasanov and Ziaur Rahman, seeded 11th and 15th.
On the lower boards, Rakesh Kulkarni and R. Ashwath drew with GMs Alexander Evdokimov and Marat Dzhumaev, seeded ninth and 13th, respectively.
The results:
Seventh round: Andrey Baryshpolets (Ukr, 6) drew with Mikhail Mozharov (Rus, 6); Ivan Popov (Rus, 6) bt Anton Demchenko (Rus, 5); N. Srinath (6) bt Cristhian Cruz (Per, 5); David Alberto (Ita, 5) drew with Nguyen Van Huy (Vie, 5.5).
Sahaj Grover (5.5) bt Vladimir Lazarev (Fra, 4.5); Bhuvanesh Ramnath (5) bt Abhijit Kunte (5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (5.5) bt Vikramaditya Kulkarni (4.5); S. Nitin (5.5) bt Saptarshi Roy (4.5).
S. L. Narayanan (5) drew with C.R.G. Krishna (5); K. Ratnakaran (5) bt Abhijeet Gupta (4); Ravi Teja (5) bt Eldar Gasanov (Ukr, 4); Nguyen Duc Hoa (Vie, 5) bt N. R. Vignesh (4); Axel Rombaldoni (Ita, 4.5) drew with M. Kunal (4.5); Niranjan Navalgund (5) bt Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 4).
Debashis Das (5) bt B.S. Shivananda (4); Samer Kathmale (4) lost to Valeriy Neverov (Ukr, 5); Shyam Sundar (4.5) drew with Rahul Sangma (4.5); Abhishek Kelkar (4.5) drew with Shyam Nikhil (4.5); Jonathan Cruz (Per, 4) lost to Swati Ghate (5).