Aleksej, Ruiyuan share lead in Chennai Open chess

Top seed Aleksandrov Aleksej (Belarus) led the table along with Yu Ruiyuan (China) with 7.0 points after the eighth round of the Chennai Open International Grandmaster chess tournament here Monday.

Half a point behind the leaders at 6.5 points were 10 players including GMs Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine), Marat Dzhumaev (Uzbekistan), Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary), J Deepan Chakkravarthy and SP Sethuraman (both India), among others.

Untitled Ruiyuan continued his impressive run holding Aleksej to a draw. The Scotch game, in which regular elimination of pieces nullified mutual advantage, peace was signed after 43 moves.

GM Sethuraman overcame IM Siddharth in a complicated game while local challenger International Master MR Venkatesh moved ahead in standings scoring over Vakhidov Jahongir of Uzbekistan.

Among those with nine-game Norm chances Tuesday were Ruiyaun and Shashikant Kutwal (India) with GM Norm and IM Norm, respectively.

Results (Round 8): Yu Ruiyuan (China) 7.0 drew Aleksandrov Aleksej (Belarus) 7.0, Karthikeyan P (6.5) drew Ma Qun (China) 6.5, Zeng Chongsheng (China) 6.5 drew Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary) 6.5, Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine) 6.5 bt Himanshu Sharma (5.5), Sethuraman S P (6.5) bt Ravichandran Siddharth (5.5), Vakhidov Jahongir (Uzbekistan) 5.5 lost to Venkatesh M R (6.5), Deepan Chakkravarthy J (6.5) bt Vishnu Prasanna V (5.5), Dzhumaev Marat (Uzbekistan) 6.5 bt Shashikant Kutwal (5.5), Vaibhav Suri (5.5) lost to Akshayraj Kore (6.5), Ashwath R (5.5) lost to Danielsen Henrik (Iceland) 6.0, Kravtsiv Martyn (Ukraine) 6.0 bt Ankit R Rajpara (5.0), Ghosh Diptayan (5.5) drew Rahman Ziaur (Bangladesh) 5.5, Toth Christian Endre (Brazil) 5.5 drew Paragua Mark (Philippines) 5.5, Konguvel Ponnuswamy (5.5) drew Bitoon Richard (Philippines) 5.5, Gomez John Paul (Philippines) 6.0 bt Rajesh V A V (5.0), Neelotpal Das (5.5) drew Babu N Sudhakar (5.5), Dibyendu Barua (5.5) drew Narayanan S L (5.5), Praveen Kumar C (6.0) bt Thejkumar M S (5.0), Phadke Sohan (5.5) drew Laxman R R (5.5), Debashis Das (6.0) bt Sagar Shah (5.0).