Rahman and Barbosa join the leaders

Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh and Oliver Barbosa of the Philippines, joined overnight leaders, Abhijit Kunte of PSPB and Vidit Santosh Gujrathi of Maharashtra, in lead with 5.5 points at the end of the seventh round of the sixth Kolkata Open International Grandmasters’ chess tournament at Gorky Sadan here on Monday.

Abhijit Kunte opted for this third consecutive draw of the tournament against former world under-14 champion Vidit Santosh Gujrathi in a Catalan opening. After exchanging the queens on the 20th move, Kunte tried to promote his pawn to eighth rank by sacrificing the knight. But Vidit played accurately and nullified the advantage to share the point.

Ukraine’s Sergey Fedorchuk overlooked a powerful combination of Ziaur Rahman’s queen and bishop to get checkmated in 31 moves. Ziaur, who defeated top seeded Nigel Short in an earlier round, was back to the top.

Former world championship finalist and top seed Nigel Short of England bounced back from his draw sequences by defeating GM Debashis Das of Odisha. He sacrificed his ‘a’ pawn and the counter play from Debashis was not proper. Short further made an exchange sacrifice to obtain a superior position and win the game.

Mikheil Mchedlishvili of Georgia accounted for Abdulla al-Rakib of Bangladesh in a queen pawn’s game lasting only 29 moves. S.P. Sethuraman of PSPB also moved on to 5 points, with a victory over Railway’s IM K. Rathnakaran.

Important results: seventh round: Abhijit Kunte (5.5) drew with Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (5.5); Landa Konstantin (Rus, 5) drew with J. Deepan Chakkravarthy J. (5); Oliver Barbosa (Phi, 5.5) bt Levan Pantsulaia (Geo, 4.5); Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 5.5) bt Sergey Fedorchuk (Ukr, 4); Abdulla Al-Rakib (Ban, 4) lost to Mikheil Mchedlishvili (Geo, 5); B. Adhiban (5) bt M. Shyam Sundar (4); M.R. Lalith Babu (5) bt Diptayan Ghosh (4); Grigoryan Avetik (Arm, 5) bt Haznedaroglu Kivanc (Tur, 4); S.P. Sethuraman (5) bt K. Rathnakaran (4); Sengupta Deep (5) bt R.R. Laxman (4).