Grandmaster and former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta ended his month and a half long European stint with a brilliant victory at the Reykjavik International open chess tournament here.
Leading the strong open by a full point in the final round, Abhijeet just needed a draw that he achieved with ease against talented Italian Grandmaster Francesco Rambaldi in the tenth and final round game.
International Master Tania Sachdev also joined the party making her second Grandmaster norm with consistent play throughout the tournament. Having made the norm with one round still remaining, Tania played out a hard-fought draw with legendry Grandmaster Alexander Beliavsky.
A kind of happiness one can only feel in sports >#ReykjavikOpen>pic.twitter.com/lkiADEj3WH
— Tania Sachdev (@TaniaSachdev) >March 17, 2016
Gupta ended on 8.5 points out of a possible 10, winning seven and drawing three games. In overall standings, Tania finished an impressive 14th on seven points after starting as the 49th seed and emerged as the best woman player of the tournament.
Elite club member Dmitry Andreikin of Russia finished second on eight points and then there was a tie for 3-11 place in which Grandmasters Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria had the best tie-break score.
Richard Rapport of Hungary finished fourth while top seed and world number 18 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov had to be content with the fifth place.
It turned out to be a memorable event for Abhijeet who tied for second but only finished fourth in the preceding open at Cannes in France. Here, the former national champion was at the top of his game and his biggest scalps were Sergei Movsesian of Armenia and Nils Grandelius of Sweden.
Besides the draw with Rambaldi, Abhijeet had earlier signed peace with Gawain Jones of England and Cheparinov and his overall performance rating was a career best 2799 and the Indian also entered the world’s top hundred with his efforts.
Speaking about his performance, Abhijeet singled out his game against Movsesian as the most important one.
“I think when I won against Movsesian I felt really good as I guess in the past he has been in top ten of the world and has also played chess at highest level, the quality of the game was also good and I was feeling I was slightly better when I refused a draw proposal too, in the end that worked or me,” Abhijeet said.
The victory against Grandelius in the penultimate round turned the tide decisively in Abhijeet’s favour.
“After beating Grandelius I was a point ahead of the rest and the main thing was not to play a self-spoiler. Recently I have lost many games in the last few rounds of various tournaments but this time luckily nothing went wrong. Also having white in the final game made things easier,” he added.
Tania’s second Grandmaster norm came after almost 10 years and the Delhi lady will need one more to join the ranks of Koneru Humpy and D. Harika who are the only two GMs among women players in India.
After a sedate start, Tania got in to the groove in round five and six when she defeated local favourite Hannes Stefansson and Alejendro Ramirez of United States. The task was only half done yet as Tania played with a barrage of very strong players in the last four rounds and came out unscathed.
Tania drew with Andreikin in seventh, Gawain Jones of England in eighth and Movsesian in ninth round to seal her norm.
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