Akshayraj Kore joins leaders, norms for Yu Ruiyuan and Shashikant Kutwal
Pune based International Master Akshayraj Kore defeated fellow Indian Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy and joined the leaders with 7.5 points after the ninth round of the SDAT – RMK 4th Chennai Open 2012 International Grandmaster Chess Tournament, at Multipurpose Indoor Stadium, Periamet, Chennai here today.
Akshayraj joined the trio of leaders viz., Aleksandrov Aleksej (Belarus), Yu Ruiyuan, Zeng Chongsheng (both China) at 7.5 points.Sharing the next point position at 7.0 points were GMs Oleksienko Mikhailo, Kravtsiv Martyn (both Ukraine), S P Sethuraman (India), Marat Dzhumaev (Uzbekistan), Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary) and John Paul Gomez (Philippines) among others.
A fighting draw against Grandmaster S P Sethuraman in the second board fetched Yu Ruiyuan of China a Grandmaster Norm. The second Norm of the day was achieved by Maharashtra player Shashikant Kutwal who defeated veteran Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua. Kutwal posted his fourth International Master Norm and now requires to touch the ELO rating of 2400 to get his International Master title confirmed.
The top board game between Grandmasters Aleksandrov Aleksej (Belarus) and Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine) turned out to be hard battle for supremacy. Aleksandrov pressed all the buttons, but Oleksienko hunted white’s extra pawn in the ‘b’ file, and fetched himself a draw after 60 moves.
Two more rounds remain in this mega 16 nation event that concludes on 12th January, 2012.
LIVE webcast of the games can be viewed at http://livechess.chessdom.com/site/
R R Vasudevan
Press Officer
SDAT – RMK 4th Chennai Open 2012 International Grandmaster Chess Tournament
Nice.