Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh brightened his chances of winning the title in the tenth and penultimate round of the NIT International Grandmasters Open Chess Tournament, organised by Nagpur Improvement Trust at Naivedhyam Recreation Centre, Nagpur, today.
He has scored 8.5 points, closely followed by top seed Aleksandrov Aleksej of Belarus and second seeded Kravtsiv Martyn of Ukraine, with 8 points each.
Ziaur wasted no time in beating Railways’ IM Himanshu Sharma (who needed to win the game to get a GM norm) In the Tarrasch variation of French defence, requiring just 22 moves. Himanshu allowed Ziaur’s a-pawn to march ahead and paid the penalty for it. Ziaur obtained enormous space advantage and Himanshu resigned, when he was about to lose a knight.
GM Ziaur Rahman
In another 22 mover, arising from the Rubinstein variation of Nimzo Indian defence, Aleksandrov made short work of Karnataka IM GA Stany, the former prevented the latter from castling by exchanging the queens on eleventh move. He launched a heavy attack on the queenside with his rooks, knight and bishop to force Stany to resign.
Vidit Santosh Gurathi of Maharashtra suffered his first loss in the tournament, going down against second seeded Kravtsiv.
Former under 14 girls’ world champion Padmini Rout of Orissa made an IM norm today be beating Swapnil Dhopade of Railways in a Caro Kann defence played by Swapnil. Padmini gained exchange on move 32 and won three moves later.
In a queen and pawns ending, Diptayan Ghosh of West Bengal had two extra pawns to score a win comfortably over GM Saidali Iuldachev of Uzbekistan. The win helped Diptayan to clinch his second IM norm, the first one having come from the Parsvnath Open, Delhi earlier this year.
Surprisingly, all the top eleven boards ended without a draw today. In an equal rook and pawns ending MR Lalith Babu, Grandmaster from AP, outwitted GM Harutjunyan Gevorg of Armenia.
IM Nisha Mohota of PSPB got the better of Petrosian Davit, another Grandmaster from Armenia having three additional pawns, besides each having a rook.
Report by IA Rathinam Anantharam
