Tiviakov in joint lead with Karthikeyan in Chess Championship

Chennai - Top seed Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov of the Netherlands moved into joint lead scoring over second seed Grandmaster Ahmed Adly of Egypt in the ninth round of the Apollo Engineering College Commonwealth Chess Championships here Thursday.

Tiviakov and P. Karthikeyan jointly lead the pack with 8.0 points, followed by MR. Venkatesh, MR. Lalith Babu, SL. Narayanan and G. Akash (all India) with 7.5 apiece.

The top board game was fought on even keel before Venkatesh gave back his exchange and picked up the half point against in-form tournament leader Karthikeyan.

The second board game against top two seeds saw Tiviakov firing on all cylinders against Adly. The closed Sicilian game went in favour of Tiviakov after 49 moves.

Young Narayanan kept his good form scoring an upset win over Ukraine Grandmaster Oleksienko Mikhailo in 39 moves while India’s Kathmale Sameer made his International Master Norm holding Grandmaster Arun Prasad to a draw.

The nine-game IM Norm is the second Norm in the event, adding to the one Ram SK

Krishnan made in the previous round.

The results (Indians unless specified):

Round 9: M R Venkatesh 7.5 drew with P Karthikeyan 8, Sergei Tiviakov (Ned) 8 bt Ahmed Adly (Egy) 6.5, Rolando Nolte (Phi) 7 drew with Lintchevski Daniil (Rus) 7, S L Narayanan 7.5 bt Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukr) 6.5, M R Lalith Babu 7.5 bt R R Laxman 6.5, G Akash 7.5 bt Sahaj Grover 6.5, Ram S Krishnan 7 drew with M Shyam Sundar 7, Neelotpal Das 6.5 drew with CRG Krishna 6.5, Mark Paragua (Phi) 6.5 drew with Akshat Khamparia 6.5, Karthikeyan Murali 6 lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) 7.