Many young, unknown Indians continued to make their presence felt by proving superior to top seeded Grandmasters on the second day of the Rs. 35-lakh Delhi International Open Grandmasters chess tournament here on Sunday.
If 16-year-old Chennai-boy N. R. Vishakh proved equal to top seeded Russian Grandmaster Boris Grachev in 52 moves in the third round, Guntur-based D. Bala Chandra Prasad produced two rock-solid performances to outwit fellow Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Belous, seeded eight, in the second round and Ukrainian GM Valeriy Neverov in the third.
Vinayak Kulkarni handed out Vietnamese GM Nguyen Huynh Minh Huy a 40-move defeat during the day, while M. R. Lalith Babu, the highest rated Indian GM, was held twice on Sunday.
The other two Indian GMs, Vaibhav Suri and Sriram Jha, also settled for a draw each during the double-round day.
In the third round, seasoned International Master Himanshu Sharma drew with Ukrainian GM Yuri Solodvnichenko in 38 moves and lesser-rated Ankit Gajwa signed the peace treaty in 20 moves another Ukrainian GM, Adam Tukhaev.
Chandra Prasad gained from the ambitious nature of Belous, who chose not to force a draw by repetition of moves in the middle game. Thereafter, the Indian’s advanced central pawn, which managed to reach the last rank and forced the Russian to part with a piece. Belous gave up on the 51st move.
An upbeat Chandra Prasad returned to stop Neverov with black pieces in 51 moves to end a highly fruitful day.
Results (Indians unless stated): Third round: N. R. Visakh (2.5) drew with Boris Grachev (Rus, 2.5);
Ivan Popov (Rus, 3) bt S. Ravi Teja (2); Himanshu Sharma (2.5) drew with Yuri Solodovnichenko (Ukr, 2.5); Rakesh Kulkarni (2.5) drew with Mikhail Mozharov (Rus, 2.5); Ankit Gajwa (2.5) drew with
Adam Tukhaev (Ukr, 2.5); Vitaliy Bernadskiy (Ukr, 3) bt Aradhya Garg (2); Ernst Sipke (Ned, 2.5) drew with Mehar Chinna Reddy (2.5); Valeriy Neverov (Ukr, 2) lost to D. Chandra Prasad (3); Himal Gusain (3) bt Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 2); Nguyen Duc Hoa (Vie, 3) bt M. Chakravarthi Reddy (2); Rahul Sangma (3) bt Surya Praneeth (2); Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (2.5) drew with Sriram Jha (2.5); Rahul Srivatshav (2.5) drew with Sayantan Das (2). Second round: Grachev bt P. Iniyan; Pratik Patil lost to Popov; Rajdeep Sarkar lost to Demchenko; Solodovnichenko bt B. T. Murali Krishnan; N. Lokesh lost to Sivuk; Mozharov bt Aniruddha Deshpande; D. Chandra Prasad bt Vladimir Belous (Rus); Tukhaev bt Raghunandan Srihari; Krishna Teja drew with M. R. Lalith Babu; Vaibhav Suri drew with K. Vijay Keerthi; Hemant Sharma lost to Bernadskiy; Shailesh Dravid lost to Sipke; Baris Esen (Tur) drew with Debarshi Mukherjee.
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