Kurnosov emerges sole leader

Grandmaster Igor Kurnosov of Russia defeated Ukraine Grandmaster Yuriy Kuzubov in the eighth round to emerge sole leader with seven points in the 1st SCS International Open GM Chess Tournament at hotel Swosti Plaza here on Friday.
Four other Grandmasters _ Yaroslav Zinchenko (Ukraine), Anuar Ismagambetov (Kazakhstan), Alexander Zubarev (Ukraine) and Abhijeet Gupta (India) _ followed Kurnosov at the second place with 6.5 points each. Top seed and Holland Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov, who was held to a draw by Abhijeet Gupta, shared the third place with 21 others, logging six points.
Of the top 10 boards, four produced decisive results. Besides Kurnosov, other three Grandmasters, who posted wins were Zinchenko, Ismagambetov and Zubarev.
Six young players jointly led host Orissa’s challenge with 5.5 points each. They included Anwesh Upadhyaya, FM Soumya Ranjan Mishra, Mohammad Ashraf, WIM Kiran Manisha Mohanty, Debasish Das and Utkal Ranjan Sahoo. Among them, Soumya put up the best performance of the day by forcing Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy to a draw.
Anwesh continued his impressive show in the 10-round tournament when he held Zambian IM Amon Simutowe to a draw. Ashraf also achieved a creditable draw against IM Vishal Sareen. Debasish, the second highest rated player of the state and Rourkela boy Utkal registered fighting victories over GV Sai Krishna and Biswajeet Nayak respectively.
But Sekhar Chandra Sahu and Swayangsu Satyapragyan, the two International Masters of the state, continued to struggle as they were forced split point by M Shyam Sundar and Fenil Shah respectively.
Ranjan Mohanty turned out to be another impressive Orissa performer of the day, outwitting Bangladesh WIM Rani Hamid.
Meanwhile, the lucrative tournament suffered a jolt following the demise of title sponsor Triveni Kumar Mohanty’s father Gopal Chandra Mohanty on Thursday last.  On the sideline of the tournament, state chess fraternity became curious as the ad-hoc committee, which has been running the game since the expulsion of Orissa State Chess Association in March this year, geared up to conduct the elections on Saturday.
RESULTS (Round 8):
Top 25 boards: Igor Kurnosov (Rus, 7) bt Yuriy Kuzubov (Ukr, 6), Abhijeet Gupta (Ind, 6.5) drew with Sergei Tiviakov (Ned, 6), Evgeny Vorobiov (Rus, 6) drew with Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (Ind, 6), Alexander Zubarev (Ukr, 6.5) bt SP Sethuraman (Ind, 5.5), Deep Sengupta (Ind, 6) drew with Roman Ovetchkin (Rus, 6), Enamul Hossain (Ban, 6) drew with Serikbay Temirbayev (Kaz, 6), MR Venkatesh (Ind, 5.5) lost to Yaroslav Zinchenko (Ukr, 6.5), Saptarshi Roy (Ind, 5.5) lost to Anuar Ismagambetov (Kaz, 6.5), Sergey Vokarev (Rus, 6) drew with Ponnuswamy Konguvel (Ind, 6), Swapnil S Dhopade (Ind, 6) drew with Rustam Khusnutdinov (Kaz, 6), B Adhiban (Ind, 6) drew with K Rathnakaran (Ind, 6), Georgy Timoshenko (Ukr, 6) bt Nikil P Shyam (Ind, 5.5), Yuri Drozdovskij (Ukr, 6) bt P Maheswaran (Ind, 5), Andrey Rychagov (Rus, 6) bt N Sudhakar Babu (Ind, 5), Neelotpal Das (Ind, 6) bt Atanu Lahiri (Ind, 5), Simutowe Amon (Zam, 5.5) drew with Anwesh Upadhyaya (Ind, Ori, 5.5), Soumya Ranjan Mishra (Ind, Ori, 5.5) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy (Ind, 5.5), Rahul Sangma (Ind, 6) bt MR Lalith Babu (Ind, 5), Sriram Jha (Ind, 6) bt Meenakshi Subbaraman (Ind, 5), Tejas Bakre (Ind, 5.5) drew with Rahul Shetty (Ind, 5.5), Arghyadip Das (Ind, 5.5) drew with Bitan Banerjee (Ind, 5.5), MS Thejkumar (Ind, 6) bt J Ramakrishna (Ind, 5), Niaz Murshed (Ban, 5.5) drew with R Bhuvanesh Ramnath (Ind, 5.5), PDS Girinath (Ind, 5.5) drew with Sagar Saha (Ind, 5.5), Akash Thakur (Ind, 5.5) drew with V Saravanan (Ind, 5.5).
Other Orissa results: Mohammad Ashraf (5.5) drew with Vishal Sareen (Ind, 5.5), Kiran Manisha Mohanty (5.5) drew with BS Shivananda (Ind, 5.5), Swayangsu Satyapragyan (5) drew with Fenil Shah (5), Sekhar Chandra Sahu (5) drew with M Shyam Sundar (Ind, 5), Manoj Kumar Panigrahi (4.5) lost to Himanshu Sharma (Ind, 5.5), Debasish Das (5.5) bt GV Sai Krishna (Ind, 4.5), Krishan Soni (4.5) lost to Shreyansh Daklia Jain (Ind, 5.5), Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (5.5) bt Biswajit Nayak (Ind, Ori, 4.5), Subhransu Mohan Satpathy (4) lost to R Premnath (Ind, 5), Rajendra Kumar Sahu (4.5) drew with Debaraj Chatterjee (Ind, 4.5), Pabitra Mohan Mohanty (5) bt Lav Kumar Shrestha (Nep, 4), Padmini Rout (5) bt Bhagawati Prasad Sharma (Ind, 4), Swayams Mishra (5) bt Sharmin Shirin Sultana (4), Sidhant Mohapatra (4) lost to Amrutha Mokal (Ind, 5), Dasharathi Sahoo (4) lost to Santanu Borpatra (Ind, 5), Santosh Das (4) lost to Badrilal Nepali (5), Sanjay Mishra (4) lost to M Deepthamsh Reddy (Ind, 5), Pradip Kumar Bisoyi (4) lost to P Saravana Krishnan (Ind, 4.5), Ranjan Mohanty (4.5) bt Rani Hamid (Ban, 3.5).