Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Abhijeet wins, Sasikiran loses again
WIJK AAN ZEE (The Netherlands): World Junior champion Abhijeet Gupta came back reckoning for top honours with a fine positional triumph over veteran Grandmaster Oleg Romanishin of Ukraine in the 9th round of the 'C' group of Corus International chess tournament.
But Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran suffered a defeat at the hands of David Navara of Czech Republic in the 'B' group to make it a mixed day for the Indian contingent.
Abhijeet took his tally to a respectable 5.5 points out of a possible nine and is now in joint third position along side Frank Holzke of Germany and David Howell of England.
The lead position remained unchanged after Tiger Hillarp Persson of Sweden played out a draw with D Harika and inched himself up to 6.5 points. The second place is held by Wesley So of Philippines who made short work of local hopeful Ali Bitalzadeh.
In the 'B' group Sasikiran will look forward to saving some of the vital elo points.
The Indian has 3 points and is playing much below his expected score. Abhijeet played his moves well to beat the experienced Romanishin. Expectedly the Ukrainian employed the Nimzo Indian and faced the Capablanca variation.
Abhijeet got a bind in the center and slowly his pieces gained in strength.
Romanishin opted to go for an inferior endgame to cut down on some pressure but ended up losing a pawn for effectively no compensation.

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