Abhijeet Gupta beats Ganguly

Grandmaster-in-waiting Abhijeet Gupta defeated four times National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly in the 9th and penultimate round of the 6 th Parsvnath International chess tournament and jumped in to shared lead with Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan. 

Abhijeet, playing black, was saddled with a passive position arising froma Sicilian Scheveningen but kept on posing enough troubles for Ganguly who went haywire with his calculation from a slightly better middle game. 

As it happened, Ganguly missed a tactical blow involving a queen sacrifice and the writing was soon on the wall as BPCL-employee Abhijeet got three pieces in exchange for his queen. Ganguly resigned immediately after, seeing no salvation in a lost position. For the records, the game lasted 34 moves. 

"I was hoping to equalize after the opening and Ganguly stood better, I think he just missed my tactical shot after which it is not possible to defend', 18 year old Abhijeet said after the game. 

Earlier in the day, the players offered their homage to former World champion Bobby Fischer who had passed away on Thursday. 

On the second board, the all-Uzbek duel between Marat Dzhumaev and Saidali Iuldachev ended in the favour of the former and in the next round Dzhumaev meets Abhijeet to decide for the winner's purse of Rs. 2.25 Lakhs in this 10 Lakh prize money tournament.

With just one round remaining, Ganguly now shares the third spot with GM norm holder Sriram Jha and GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh on 7.5 points each. 

Triple GM norm holder G B Prakash made another GM norm after holding Igor Kurnosov of Russia. Prakash, an Indian bank employee, had given up competitive chess for a years and only recently made a comeback. The Chennai-based needs to get his rating escalated to 2500 ELO points to become a Grandmaster and if his performance here is any indication, that does not seem too far away. 

Debashish Das made his maiden IM norm despite losing to Rahaman in the ninth round. 

Ninth round (Indians unless stated): Surya Shekhar Ganguly (7.5) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (8); Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb, 6.5) lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 8); Igor Kurnosov (Rus, 7) drew with G. B. Prakash (7); Roktim Bandyopadhyay (7) drew with Abhijit Kunte (7); C. Praveen Kumar (7) drew with Nguyen Anh Dung (Vie, 7); Debashis Das ( 6.5) lost to Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 7.5); V. A. V. Rajesh (6.5) lost to Sriram Jha (7.5); Zhanibek Amanov (Kaz, 6.5) drew with Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Iri, 6.5); P. 
 

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