Dreev Wins Parsvnath Chess Tourney

Rohit most successful among Indians; Dreev wins Parsvnath chess tourney Gogineni Rohit of Hyderabad emerged most successful Indian reaping an impressive haul of two norms with a runners up position in the star studded fifth Parsvanath International Chess tournament, which was expectedly won by top seed Alexei Dreev of Russia here today.

The 18-year-old Hyderabad teenager completed his third and final International Master-norm and maiden Grandmaster norm in the field of over 300 players, including 13 GMs, six among whom were Indians.

Dreev, who has an ELO rating of 2658, defeated B Adhiban in the 10th and final round to finish a clear winner with 8.5 out of a possible 10 points to bag the purse of Rs two lakh in the Swiss-league tournament played at Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.

Half a point adrift of Dreev were seven players -- Rohit, GMs Ahmed Adly of Egypt, Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh, four-time national champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly, IMs Enamul Hossain and Abdulla Al-Rakib of Bangladesh, and Vikramaditya Kamble. All these players got a little over Rs. 50000 for their efforts.

Ahmed Adly finished the second runner up and Rahman and Ganguly were fourth and fifth after the tiebreak was resolved under Bucholz system.

After Rohit, Abhijeet Gupta and S Arun Prasad, Adhiban became the other Indian to make a norm here as he completed formalities of an IM norm just by appearing on board today against the top seed Dreev.

Even as he lost, Adhiban, held Dreev, who was playing with white, for over three hours to last 57 moves on the top board. Adhiban maintained equal positions till quite some time and then went attacking his weak queen side pawns but his inexperience showed as he delayed the exhange and had to resign depsite a creditable show.

Rohit was equally superb in his final round as he drew with Adly, who played an irregular opening and exchanged queens with the Indian in the 36th move. The game developed into the queen-pawn ending and then Rohit claimed his opponent's King.

"I could have taken his pawn, in fact. I had also offered him the draw in 18th move," Rohit said after the match.  In an interesting match of the day, Abhijeet Gupta, with black lost a winning game against Ziaur Rahman in 60 moves. Abhijeet unexpectedly blundered away a completely won position in the endgame, falling to a checkmate.

Ganguly, who defeated Shukhrat Safin with black pieces in 46 moves, said he was satisfied with his performance in the tournament.  "I am satisfied because at the end I am winning some rating points. Also eight points is not very bad because initially I was really not doing well being unwell," he said.

Click here for complete final standings

home

Published on : 02nd Feb,  2007