Sandipan beats Nana, share joint lead in Gibraltar chess

Gibraltar: Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda impressed yet again as he beat GM Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia to jump into the joint lead at the end of the sixth round of the Gibtelecom Masters chess tournament now underway here.

Amon other Indians to have registered victories in the round are Grandmasters Koneru Humpy, G N Gopal and world junior girls’ champion D Harika. Sandipan, with five points in his kitty, shares the lead with Michael Adams of England, German Jan Gustafsson and surprise packet Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine. Humpy, Gopal and Harika share the fifth spot on 4.5 points with 21 others. The other Indians in the fray had a relatively mixed day as International Master V Saravanan played out a draw with higher ranked and women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia. IM Tania Sachdev and Kruttika Nadig also had to split points against Alan Byron of England and Joar Gullestad Pettersen of Norway. But the lone Indian to end up on the losing side in the sixth round was IM Eesha Karavade who went down to Gopal. However, the high point of round six was Sandipan’s miniature victory over Nana. Playing the black side of an irregular opening, the Indian was quick to launch a king side attack after an excellent pawn sacrifice in the very early middle game. Sandipan sacrificed an exchange on the 22nd move and forced resignation from his opponent a couple of moves later. Humpy, meanwhile, outwitted Irina Krush of United States from the white side of a queen pawn game. The Indian picked up pawns at will towards the end of the game to pocket the encounter in 37 moves. Gopal also won in 37 moves against Eesha, while Saravanan came close to causing an upset but Kosteniuk was on guard to save herself after being a piece less in the endgame. PTI