The victorious trio of Abhijeet Gupta, R. R. Laxman and M. R. Lalith Babu moved to the joint second spot as an Indian sweep of medals became a certainty in the Parsvnath Commonwealth chess championship at the Hotel Clarks Inn, Pacific Mall, here on Monday.
While a second successive defeat dashed Parimarjan Negi’s dreams of winning the title after suffering a rare loss with white pieces against Argentina’s Pablo Lafuente in just 28 moves, Abhijeet, Laxman and Lalith Babu provided the brighter side after scoring contrasting victories over compatriots to move to eight points.
Overnight leader Pavel Maletin (8.5 points) maintained his half-point lead following a 20-move draw with fellow Russian Dmitry Bocharov.
In Tuesday’s final round, the top six boards features at least one Indian in contention for a medal. The overseas players, being from non-Commonwealth countries, will be fighting for the prize money.
Abhijeet, fresh from winning the bronze medal in the Asian championship in the Philippines, defeated Aswin Jayaram in 30 moves. He now faces Bocharov in the final round.
Laxman, too, won as expected against Vinay Kumar Matta in 40 moves but it was Lalith Babu who battled an inferior position for the better part of his game against talented youngster Girish Koushik.
Eventually, Babu capitalised on the inexperience of Girish in handling tricky endgames and won in 80 moves. Babu now plays leader Maletin.
The day saw four more International Master norms being made. Prasanna Rao made a 10-game norm while S. Nitin, Sayantan Das and Gurpreet Pal Singh collected nine-game norms.
Prasanna, armed with two IM norms from the last three outings, made his third and final norm following a 30-move draw with GM Abhijit Kunte. Nitin attained his maiden norm after holding Russian GM Dmitry Kokarev.
Sayantan, who won the World boys (under-12) title in 2008, defeated the experienced B. S. Shivananda while Gurpreet Pal Singh collected his maiden norm after he drew with his former student and IM Sahaj Grover.
The results (Indians unless stated): 10th round: Dmitry Bocharov (Rus, 8) drew with Pavel Maletin (Rus, 8.5); Parimarjan Negi (7.5) lost to Pablo Lafuente (Arg, 8); Aswin Jayaram (7) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (8); Prasanna Rao (7.5) drew with Abhijit Kunte (7.5); M. R. Lalith Babu (8) bt Girish Koushik (7); R. R. Laxman (8) bt Vinay Kumar Matta (7); Alexey Dreev (7.5) bt G. V. Sai Krishna (7); Dmitry Kokarev (Rus, 7) drew with S. Nitin (7); Tania Sachdev (7) drew with Eltaj Safarli (7); Shyam Sundar (7) drew with Martyn Kravtsiv (Ukr, 7); Shakil Abu Sufian (7) drew with Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb, 7); Gurpreet Pal Singh (7) drew with Sahaj Grover (7); Abhishek Das (6) lost to Rustam Khusnutdinov (Kaz, 7); Vaibhav Suri (6.5) drew with Sriram Jha (6.5).
Final round (top-10 pairings): Maletin-Babu; Gupta-Bocharov; Lafuente-Laxman; Kunte-Dreev; Bakre Negi; Safarli-Rao; Srinath-Kokarevl Kravtsiv-Lodhi; Khusnutdinov-Sundar; Iuldachev-Gurpreet.
