Sasikiran Disappoints In Spain
By Arvind Aaron
 

Second seed Krishnan Sasikiran ended the 8-player category 15 tournament on March 25 without a single victory. He drew five games and lost two. The tournament was a great success for third seed Gabriel Sargissian of Armenia who recorded a notice serving 3021 rating performance.

The event ran from March 16-25 at Zafra, the birth place of Ruy Lopez in Spain. Sasikiran who is now a 2700 rated player had not performed to new high expectations from the Indian chess fans. He played at a 2498 rating level and would be among the leading losers of rating in this event.

Top seed, former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov will lose the second most rating. Sargissian drew Ivan Sokolov and beat the rest for his career best show.

Final placings: 1 G.Sargissian (Arm) 6.5/7, 2-3 Granda Zuniga (Per), R.Ponomariov (Ukr) 4 each, 4 I.Sokolov (Ned) 3.5, 5 P.Candelario (Esp) 3, 6-7 K.Sasikiran (Ind), A.Stefanova (Bul) 2.5 each, 8 Hou Yifan (Chn) 2.

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Published on : 27th March, 2007