Marat Dzhumaev in sole lead

Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan emerged as the sole leader defeating Igor Kurnosov of Russia in the sixth round of the 6th Parsvnath International chess tournament now in progress here at Modern School.

Dzhumaev took his tally to an enviable 6 points with his sixth successive victory and is now a half point clear of nearest rivals Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran, Elizbar Ubilava of Spain, India's best bet Surya Shekhar Ganguly and triple GM norm holder G B Prakash who all have 5.5 points apiece.

The next pack of 5 pointers include amongst others Grandmaster-in-waiting Abhijeet Gupta and International Master Tania Sachdev who both won engrossing games in the sixth round to remain in reckoning for top honours.

With four rounds still to come in the biggest open event of the country that carries a total prize pool of Rs. 10 Lakhs, things are only going to liven up further in the next few days as the battle for supremacy will get heated up further.

Marat played imaginatively but was a bit lucky too in beating Kurnosov who appeared well-placed at one point in this keenly contested game. Playing black, Dzhumaev played his pet Pirc defense and got the dynamic balance but Kurnosov maintained the pressure initially. It was in the endgame that the Russian erred and Dzhumaev made no mistakes to pocket the full point.

Surya Shekhar Ganguly had a field day against R R Laxman. Playing white Laxman faced the Queen's Gambit accepted and did not make many attempts to recover the lost pawn in the early phase of the game. Ganguly hung on to it till the very end and after the trade of queens it was all over for Laxman. The game lasted 44 moves.

Debashish Das caused a upset defeating Ghane Shoozat of Iran.


Top results round 6 (Indians unless specified): Igor Kurnosov (Rus, 5) lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 6); G B Prakash (5.5) drew with Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb, 5); Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Iri, 5.5) beat Sapat Batyrov (Tkm, 4.5); R R Laxman (4.5) lost to S S Ganguly (5.5); Elizbar Ubilava (Esp, 5.5) beat Safin Shukrat (Uzb, 4.5); Nguyen Anh Dung (Vie, 5) drew with K Rathnakaran (5); Mahjoob Morteza (Iri, 5) drew with S Arun Prasad (5); Abhijit Kunte (5) beat Arjun Tiwari ( 4.5); Aditya Udeshi (4) lost to Enamul Hossain (Ban, 5); Atanu Lahiri (4) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (5); Tania Sachdev (5) beat Soumya Ranjan Mishra (4); Ghane Shoozat (Iri, 4) lost to Debashish Das (5); Bitan Banerjee (5) beat Darban Morteza (Iri, 4).

Back to tournament index