Deepan Chakkravarthy produced a flawless display to stun fourth seeded Italian Grandmaster David Alberto to emerge as the first sole leader after maintaining an all-win sequence following the fourth round of the Parsvnath Delhi International chess tournament here on Sunday.
After the top-board battle between training-partners Abhijeet Gupta and Sahaj Grover ended in a 10-move draw, third seeded Russian GM Anton Demchenko accounted for the fifth overnight leader C.R.G. Krishna in 33 moves.
Deepan, seeded 20, gained a comfortable position against Alberto’s Sicilian Defence. With the Indian holding the initiative, it was important for the fourth seed to be proactive or face a slow death.
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Heading for a potentially-inferior endgame, Alberto gave up a rook for a bishop but it did not help his cause.
Facing an impending attack, Alberto gave up after 32 moves.
The session produced 10 decisive encounters out of the first 12 boards, with Himanshu Sharma upstaging 14th seeded Italian GM Axel Rombaldoni in 53 moves, International Master S. Satyapragyan beating GM Debashis Das in 51 moves and S. Nitin, playing black, outplaying last year’s runner-up, 17th seeded Ukrainian GM Valeriy Neverov in 60 moves.
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Twelve players, including eight Indians, shared the second spot with 3.5 points. Aniruddha Deshpande continued his unbeaten run by holding Sabino Brunello (Italy).
The results:Fourth round: Abhijeet Gupta (3.5) drew with Sahaj Grover (3.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (4) bt David Alberto (Ita, 4); Anton Demchenko (Rus, 3.5) bt C. R. G. Krishna (3); Mikhail Mozharov (3.5) bt Swapnil Dhopade (2.5); Cristhian Cruz (Per, 3.5) bt Pradeep Kumar (2.5); Prasanna Rao (2.5) lost to Andrey Baryshpolets (Ukr, 3.5); Himanshu Sharma (3.5) bt Axel Rombaldoni (Ita, 2.5); S. Satyapragyan (3.5) bt Debashis Das (2.5); Valeriy Neverov (Ukr, 2.5) lost to S. Nitin (3.5); Rishi Sardana (Aus, 3) drew with Shyam Sundar (3); N. Srinath (3.5) drew with B. T. Murali Krishna (2.5); Vikramaditya Kulkarni (3.5) bt Jonathan Cruz (Per, 2.5); Saptarshi Roy (3) drew with Nishant Malhotra (3); N. R. Visakh (3.5) bt Anurag Mhamal (2.5).