Vietnamese GM closer to title, three Indians joint third

Kolkata: Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem won his top board encounter against GM Anton Filippov of Uzbekistan to sit pretty on top of the heap at 7.5 points after the penultimate round of the 4th Kolkata Open Grandmaster Chess

tournament here today. With just the final round left for tomorrow, the Vietnamese is almost assured of the title unless he commits any last minute blunder. Liem employed his favourite Caro-Kann defence and soon there were opposite coloured bishops and a few other pieces on the board. The Vietnamese used his better developed pieces to get in a kingside attack and Filippov had to eventually throw in the towel. GM Viktor Laznicka is closely following Liem half a point adrift. Both Liem and Laznicka have already met each other and will be playing different opponents in the final round. Laznicka won a fine game against Evgeny Postny of Israel to get the sole second spot. He defended the desperate kingside attack of the Israeli to eventually win a pawn in the endgame. Thereafter, it was easy game for him. In an upset of the day, International Master S Satyapragyan from Orissa held British GM Nigel Short to join local GMs Surya Sekhar Ganguly and Sandipan Chanda in the joint third spot with 6.5 points apiece. The two others at joint third include top seed Azerbaijani GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and GM Anton Filippov Anton of Uzbekistan. Despite his better pawn structure, Short could not break through the defences of Satyapragyan and decided to split points. Sandipan and Surya won their respective games against GM Rustam Khusnutdinov of Kazakhstan and IM B Adhiban. It dented Adhiban`s chances of getting the GM norm, but the two Indians now lie in joint third spot. IM R R Laxman became the country`s 19th GM after he got a draw against GM Rauf Mamedov of Azerbaijan. He has completed all his three norms and also the rating threshold of 2500 stipulated by FIDE. FM Sahaj Grover got his maiden GM norm drawing against IM Sriram Jha. Sahaj already has the requisite number of IM norms but has not yet touched the 2400 rating threshold. Vidit Gujrathi, Shyam Nikhil, Abhishek Das, Ankit Rajpara and Shiven Khosla achieved their nine game IM norms. Bureau Report