Indians shine in Chennai Open chess

The Indian trio of S.L. Narayanan, Akshayraj Kore and Vishnu Prasanna stunned Grandmasters Mark Paragua (Philippines), Dzhumaev Marat (Uzbekistan) and Gomez John Paul (Philippines) respectively in the fourth round of the Chennai Open International Grandmasters chess tournament here Friday.

GMs Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine) and Neelotpal Das (India), along with IMs Vishnu Prasanna and Akshayraj Kore, shared the lead with 4.0 points after the fourth round.

Following the leaders half a point behind at 3.5 points were GMs Aleksandrov Aleksej (Belarus), SP Sethuraman (India), Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh) and Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary) along with 15 other players.

In the upsets of the day, dynamic play on the black side of the Sicilian netted Chennai lad Vishnu Prasanna a full point against Gomez.

It was noteworthy that Vishnu used his king as an active piece in the end game, moving it deep into enemy territory for delivering the final blow in 46 moves.

Pune lad Kore punished Dzhumaev’s tentative play in the Evans Gambit. The sacrifice of an early pawn could not fetch much of an initiative for the Grandmaster as Akshayraj increased his advantage and forced Dzhumaev to give up after 39 moves.

Meanwhile, 13-year-old Narayanan found his touch on the right occasion as he played his black pieces with great enterprise. The middle game tilted in the Indian boy’s favor as he went for a king-side initiative forgoing his castle.

The Philippino Grandmaster Mark Paragua, misjudged the force of black’s attack and resigned facing check mate or heavy loss of material.

Results (Round 4): Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary) 3.5 drew Aleksandrov ALeksej (Belarus) 3.5, Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine) 4 bt M S Thejkumar (3), S P Sethuraman (3.5) drew S Nitin (3.5), Gomez John Paul (Philippines) 3 lost to Vishnu Prasanna V (4), Himanshu Sharma (3.5) drew M R Venkatesh (3.5), Debashis Das (3.5) drew Yu Ruiyuan (China) 3.5, Dzhumaev Marat (Uzbekistan) lost to Akshayraj Kore (4), Ghosh Diptayan (3) lost to Neelotpal Das (4), Kravtsiv Martyn (Ukraine) 3 drew Shashikant Kutwal (3.5), Ankit R Rajpara (3) drew Danielsen Henrik (Iceland) 3, V A V Rajesh (2.5) lost to Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh) 3.5, Paragua Mark (Philippines) 2.5 lost to S L Narayanan (3.5), J Deepan Chakkravarthy (3) drew Mu Ke (China) 3, Barua Dibyendu (3) drew Gagare Shardul (3), Vaibhav Suri (3.5) bt S Ravi Teja (2.5), Vakhidov Jahongir (Uzbekistan) 3.5 bt V R Aravindh Chithambaram (2.5), M Kunal (3.5) bt G A Stany (2.5), K Rathnakaran (3.5) bt Ramanathan Balasubramaniam (2.5), Singh S Vikramjit (3) drew P Karthikeyan (3)