Delhi Chess Round 9: GM Abhijeet Gupta with 1/2 Point Lead, to Play GM Eldar Gasanov in Last Round Thursday

Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013

Hello everyone,

India's highest prize-money chess open, the 12th Parsvnath Delhi Chess Open has just one round to go now. In the ninth round, GM Abhijeet Gupta scored a quick draw with Grandmaster Alexander Evdokimov of Russia and is now atop the table with just one round to go. On what turned out to be a very easy outing as black, Gupta blitzed his moves in quick time in the Grunfeld defense and Evdokimov, who arrived about ten minutes late for the game, decided to play it safe too with his white pieces. The pieces changed hands in a heap in the opening and the draw was signed in a mere 14 moves when the players were about to reach a level rooks and pawns endgame.

The draw took Gupta (photo) to 7.5 points out of a possible nine and he still enjoys a half point lead over nearest rivals. For the records, Ukrainian duo of Eldar Gasanov and Valeriy Neverov and John Paul Gomez of Philippines share the second spot on seven points each. 

As many as four players – Grandmasters Deepan Chakkravarthy, Levan Pantsulaia of Georgia, International Master and Asian Junior champion N Srinath and Evdokimov share the fifth spot on 6.5 points each.

It turned out to be a hard fought affair at the top boards as Gomez ended the party of M R Lalith Babu in a bizarre game where the latter simply missed the thread of the position after enjoying better prospects in the opening.

Neverov got the better of unheralded Bobir Sattarov of Uzbekistan in a one sided affair while Gasanov proved superior to Ankit Rajapara who played with white pieces.

A little lower, Deepan Chakkravarthy played a fine game to beat International Master V Saravanan. It was a picturesque battle when Chakkravarthy sacrificed a full piece only for some positional compensation and slowly outplayed Saravanan in the ensuing endgame.

In other important games of the day, Srinath did his bit by defeating Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan while Pantsulaia put it across former Commonwealth Champion R R Laxman to move within striking distance. (www.indianchessnews.com)

Top Pairings
Round 10 on 2014/01/16

1 GM Gupta Abhijeet 2606 7½ - 7 GM Gasanov Eldar 2469
2 GM Gomez John Paul 2541 7 - 7 GM Neverov Valeriy 2519
3 GM Pantsulaia Levan 2614 6½ - 6½ IM Narayanan Srinath 2414
4 GM Evdokimov Alexander A. 2558 6½ - 6½ GM Deepan Chakkravarthy J. 2475
5 IM Ankit R. Rajpara 2443 6 - 6 GM Lalith Babu M.R. 2579

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