Abhijeet Gupta in sole lead after spectacular win
Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta scored a spectacular victory over Grandmaster Mihail Nikitenko to grab the sole lead at the end of the ninth and penultimate round with eight points in the 21st Delhi GM Open chess tournament at the Tivoli Gardens, Chhattarpur, on Friday.
Abhijeet came up with a flurry of sacrifices, including a fresh minted queen, to light up the end game, forcing the overnight joint leader to resign after 48 moves.
International Master Aronyak Ghosh of the Railways was up by three pawns in the end game against Viresh Sharnarthi to secure full points. With 7.5 points, Aronyak was in joint second place with Grandmaster Aditya Samant.
Aronyak will challenge Abhijeet in the tenth and final round of the tournament on Saturday.
Aditya rallied his forces nicely with the black to have a rook and three minor pieces against two rooks of Grandmaster Aleksej Aleksandrov.
Aditya will play top seed S.L. Narayanan in the final round. There were 13 players with seven points including Narayanan who drew with Grandmaster Mamikon Gharibyan.
The results (ninth round): Abhijeet Gupta 8 bt Mihail Nikitenko 7; Mamikon Gharibyan 7 drew with S.L. Narayanan 7; Van Huy Nguyen 7 drew with Diptayan Ghosh 7; Neelash Saha 7 drew with Manuel Petrosyan 7; Vitaly Sivuk 7 drew with S Nitin 7; Aronyak Ghosh 7.5 bt Viresh Sharnarthi 6.5; Aleksej Aleksandrov 6.5 lost to Aditya Samant 7.5; Karthik Venkataraman 7 bt Shahil Dey 6; Manish Cristiano 6 lost to Luka Paichadze 7; Adarsh Sriram 7 bt Samyak Dharewa 6; Boris Savchenko 6 lost to Semetei Tegin 7; David Gochelashvili 7 drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy 6.5; Harsh Suresh 6.5 drew with MIkulas Manik 6.5; Paras Bhoir 6.5 drew with Uurtsaikh Agibileg 6.5; Duc Hoa Nguyen 7 bt Arnav Agrawal 6; Raset Zlatdinov 5.5 lost to Levan Pantsulaia 6.5.
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