Tue, Aug 17 10 10:36 AM
Chalkida (Greece), Aug 17 (PTI) Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly suffered a shock defeat at the hands of GM Suat Atalik of Turkey in the seventh round on a disappointing day for the Indians in the first Negroponte International Open Chess Tournament here. Abhijeet Gupta and Vishnu Prasanna also suffered defeats and it seems the Indians are out of title race in this 25,000 Euro prize money tournament. Second of world champion Viswanathan Anand, Ganguly''s game was the shocker of the day as the Indian went down from what looked like a fine position out of a King''s Indian defense. Playing black, Ganguly faced the Bayonet attack but his relatively new plan gave him good counter chances on the king side which is typical of this opening structure. Atalik, however, attacked the queen side relentlessly and it was just a matter of one move that Ganguly missed and the evaluation of the position turned upside down. Atalik was threatening to push his pawns to glory when Ganguly resigned in the endgame. The Turkish player also emerged in sole lead following this victory and the closest Indians are all one and a half point adrift of the leader now. Abhijeet Gupta was outdone by Vladimir Burmakin of Russia. Abhijeet had survived a scare at the hands of Vishnu Prasanna in the previous round and his poor run continued for the second day running as Burmakin capitalised on an optical blunder to win a pawn. Abhijeet could not stage a fight-back that he is known to put and was eventually grounded after losing a rook for a minor piece. Vishnu Prasanna''s hunt for his maiden GM norm ended after his defeat against Robert Hess of United States. Playing white, Vishnu had things under control when all of a sudden he sacrificed a couple of pawns to look for the counter play that was not forthcoming. It turned out to be a bad plan eventually and Hess cashed in on his extra material after some thought. Tania Sachdev also went down to lose a handful of rating points. In the seventh round, Tania found her nemesis in Alexandros Panagiotopoulos of Greece. On the brighter side, former world junior girls'' champion D Harika played out a draw with Grandmaster Nikolov Momchil of Bulgaria while International Master Sahaj Grover got half a point against Grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi of Iran. GM norm holder Vaibhav Suri also ended on the winning side like Soumya Swaminathan and Deepan Chakkravarthy while Asian junior champion M Shyam Sundar was held to a draw. MORE PTI COR PM
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