The title-race of the 8th Parsvnath International Open chess tournament reached the home stretch after most of the Indian challengers tumbled out of contention in the 10th and penultimate round at the Modern School hall here.
On Thursday, second seeded Slovenian Luca Lenic joined Iran’s Ehsan Ghaem Maghami in the lead at 8.5 points after scoring over Russia’s Tolstikh Nikolay on the second board in 44 moves. Maghami, who has never trailed in the competition, agreed to a nine-move draw with Kazakh Pavel Kotsur.
From India’s point of view, the brightest spot was Deep Sengupta holding the top seeded Vietnamese Le Quang Liem in 64 moves to share the third spot with five others. GM-norm holder M. S. Thejkumar, too, did well to hold fourth seed Maxim Turov in 62 moves. Also creditable was Arghyadip Das proving equal to low-rated Russian GM Andrey Gutov.
In fact, with eight Indians – P. Konguvel, P. Karthikeyan, Ravi Hegde, Saptarshi Roy, Swapnil Dhopade, K. Rathnakaran, Tania Sachdev and Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury - losing to higher-rated overseas rivals, only four Indians managed to figure on the top-10 boards in the final round.
On Friday, Maghami and Lenic cannot afford to take early draws. With six players just half a point behind, the leaders will have to keep an eye on the other leading boards, too.
The results (Indians unless stated):
10th round: Pavel Kotsur (Kaz, 8) drew with Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Iri, 8.5); Nikolay Tolstikh (Rus, 7.5) lost to Luca Lenic (Slo, 8.5); Le Quang Liem (Vie, 7.5) drew with Deep Sengupta (8); P. Konguvel (7) lost to Dmitry Kryakvin (Rus, 8); P. Karthikeyan (7) lost to Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 8); Martyn Kravtsiv (Ukr, 8) bt Ravi Hegde (7); Saptarshi Roy (7) lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 8); Arghyadip Das (7.5) drew with Andrey Gutov (Rus, 8); Maxim Turov (Rus, 7) drew with M. S. Thejkumar (7); S. Arun Prasad (7.5) bt M. R. Lalith Babu (6.5); Swapnil Dhopade (6.5) lost to Alexander Zubarev (Ukr,7.5); Rinat Jumabayev (Kaz, 7.5) bt K. Rathnakaran (6.5); Tania Sachdev (6.5) lost to Saildali Iuldachev (Uzb, 7.5); B. T. Murali Krishnan (7) drew with R. R. Laxman (7); Deepan Chakkravarthy (7) drew with P. D. S. Girinath (7); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (6.5) lost to Richard Bitoon (Phi, 7.5); Himanshu Sharma (7.5) bt Vikramaditya Kamble (6.5); Pravin Thipsay (7) bt M. Vinay Kumar (6); Sahaj Grover (7) bt Sergey Savitskiy (Rus, 6); Mikulas Manik (Svk, 7) bt Prasenjit Dutta (6); Bitan Banerjee (6) lost to Dimakiling Oliver (Phi, 7); C. S. Gokhale (7) bt Ashwin Jayaram (6); Shiven Khosla (6.5) drew with Niaz Murshed (Ban, 6.5); B. S. Shivananda (6.5) drew with Navin Kanna (6.5); Rahul Sangma (6.5) drew with Mehar Chinna Reddy (6.5); Puneet Jaiswal (6.5) lost to Justin Sarkar (USA, 7); Aniruddha Deshpande (6) lost to Vishnu Prasanna (7); O. T. Anil Kumar (6) lost to Nafisa Muminova (Uzb, 7).
Final round (top-10 pairings): Kryakvin-Lenic; Maghami-Rahman; Dzhumaev-Kotsur; Sengupta-Kravtsiv; Bitoon-Liem; Himanshu-Arun; Zubarev-Tolstikh; Gutov-Jumabaev; Iuldachev-Das; Justin-Turov.
