Vietnamese GM clinches title, Sandipan best among Indians

Kolkata: Local Grand Master Sandipan Chanda finished fourth, the best among Indians, while GM Le Quang Liem of Vietnam emerged champion after the final round of the 4th Kolkata Open Grandmaster Chess tournament.

The top 20 finish had all GMs and Swayangsu Satyapragyan, the sole International Master. The Orissa player was second best among Indians, finishing seventh ahead of local GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly at the Gorky Sadan. In the final round against champion Liem, Satyapragyan played safe and exchanged pieces regularly to eventually force the draw by repetition of moves. The find of the meet was FIDE Master Sahaj Grover (Elo 2288) who stunned three GMs -- Reefat Bin-Sattar (2461), Tiger Hilarp Persson (2577) and Gadir Guseinov (2667) -- to collect his maiden GM norm.RR Laxman had yesterday became the 20th Grandmaster from India after collecting his third GM norm. Ten players made their IM norms in the meet. They are Abhishek Das, Anwesh Upadhyay, B S Shivananda, Shyam Nikhil, Akshat Khamparia, Ankit Rajpara, Vidit Gujrathi, Sayantan Das, Nisha Mohota and Shiven Khosla. Top seeded GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan stamped his class on the later part of the competition winning a few games in a row. He defeated GM Viktor Laznicka of the Czech Republic in another fine display of attacking chess to grab the second spot. Bureau Report