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Madurai International Master Panchanathan Mahesh Chandran who is a student in the University of Texas at Dallas became India's twelfth grandmaster when he tied for first place in the $180,000 33rd World Open that concluded at Philadelphia in the United States on Monday.
In the title play off, 22-year old Mahesh lost to GM Kamil Milton of New York. Having scored 7.5 points from the nine rounds in the 204-player event, Mahesh obtained his third and final grandmaster norm.
Mahesh had got his first grandmaster norm by winning the Asian Junior Championship at Sri Lanka in 2003. He completed his second norm at Bar in Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia) in March this year. In a true professional sense he got his three norms came from different continents.
His 7.5 points came from a string of victories over strong players like Jaan Ehlvest (Est), Yuri Shulman (Isr) and Alexander Shabalov (USA). Mahesh lost one game to Larry Christiansen (USA) and drew Alexander Onischuk (USA) while beating the rest to reach a new height in his chess career.
The final round was a rare sight with three Indians playing in the top four boards. Sandipan Chanda of ONGC, Kolkata shocked Gata Kamsky of United States to share the third to sixth places with seven points. National champion Surya Sekhar Ganguly shared the seventh place.
Indians made a lasting impression in this event held at Adams Mark Hotel. Last year only Abhijit Kunte of Indian Oil, Pune played in this event. This year the Government had cleared the men and women's teams and most of them are gaining Elo from this event.
Mahesh joins the Indian grandmaster club as the twelfth member. Other eleven are: Anand, Barua, Thipsay, Kunte, Sasikiran, Ganguly, Harikrishna, Chanda, Humpy, Ramesh and
Bakre.
Top and Indian placings: 1-2 Kamil Milton (USA), P.Mahesh Chandran (Ind) 7.5/9, 3-6 Sandipan Chanda (Ind), H.Nakamura, I.Ibragimov, V.Akobian (all USA) 7 each, 7-12 S.S.Ganguly 6.5, 13-39 Gata Kamsky (USA), Abhijit Kunte, Sundararajan Kidambi, M.R.Venkatesh 6 each, 40-55 Nisha Mohota 5.5, 56-81 Saptarshi Roy Choudhury 5, 82-109 Swati Ghate 4.5, 110-114 Bhagyashree Thipsay, Anupama Gokhale 4 each...204 players.
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