Indian GM Iniyan wins chess tourney in Spain, GM S L Narayanan finishes second in Armenia

Indian Grandmaster P Iniyan clinched the title in the La Nucia Open chess tournament with an unbeaten run on Tuesday. On the other hand, Grandmaster S L Narayanan played a draw against Russian GM Aleksey Goganov in the final round to finish second in the ChessMood Open chess tournament.

(File Photo) Indian Grandmaster P Iniyan clinched the title in the La Nucia Open chess tournament with an unbeaten run.

Indian Grandmaster P Iniyan clinched the title in the La Nucia Open chess tournament with an unbeaten run on Tuesday. The 19-year-old Iniyan, with an Elo rating of 2529, finished equal on seven points with GMs Andrey Sumets (Ukraine) and Rodrigo Vasquez Schroeder (Chile), but the Indian won the event based on a better tie-break score.

Iniyan, who was seeded fifth, remained unbeaten in the nine-round tournament. He won six games and drew two, apart from getting a bye in the eighth round.

He finished the tournament with a win over IM Jony Wilson Leon Valdes of Cuba in the ninth and final round to end with seven points.

"It feels great to win the title here," a delighted Iniyan said, adding the win over Evgeny Postny of Israel in the fifth round was his best match of the tournament.

Indian Grandmaster S L Narayanan finishes second in ChessMood Open

Indian Grandmaster S L Narayanan played a draw against Russian GM Aleksey Goganov in the final round to finish second in the ChessMood Open chess tournament, which concluded at Tsaghkadzor near here on Tuesday.

Goganov emerged a clear winner with 7.5 points while Narayanan logged seven points.

The top-seeded Narayanan, who was on 6.5 points at the end of the eighth round, needed to beat Goganov in the final round to have a shot at winning the title.

Narayanan had defeated compatriot Arjun Erigaisi in the eighth round to keep his championship hopes but the draw in the final round put paid to his title hopes.

The 23-year old Indian GM won six games and drew two while going down to GM Samvel Ter-Sahakyan (Armenia) in the fourth round.

Young Indian GM R Praggnanandhaa took sixth place with 6.5 points while two other compatriots Abhimanyu Puranik (6.5 points) and Karthik Venkataraman (6.5 points) finished eighth and tenth respectively.

Praggnanandhaa's sister R Vaishali, a woman Grandmaster, took the 16th spot with six points. Erigaisi (5.5) and D Gukesh, also with 5.5 points, ended 18th and 20th in the nine-round event.

In the final round, Praggnanandhaa drew against Masoud Mosadeghpour (Iran) while Vaishali and Gukesh played out a draw.