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Ramesh moves closer to final GM norm

By Rakesh Rao

Nelotpal Das (left) analysing his eighth round drawn game against GM P. Harikrishna in the Parsvanath International chess tournament in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

NEW DELHI OCT. 7. After Monday's storm, there was an understandable lull in the Parsvnath International chess tournament. Still, there was enough buzz when R.B. Ramesh, nothwithstanding a technicality or two, found himself within a draw of achieving his third and final Grandmaster-norm.

With three rounds to go, Ramesh shares the lead with Russian GM Alexander Fominyh at seven points after Tuesday's eighth round.

Moldova's GM Dmitry Svetushkin, P. Hari Krishna, Surya Sekhar Ganguly and Neelotpal Das follow the leaders with 6.5 points each.

Ramesh played out a 23-move draw in Queen's Indian Defence with Svetushkin. In this listless encounter, the Grandmaster turned down Ramesh's draw-offer once before the start and again after the 19th move.

But four moves later, Svetushkin himself saw no point in continuing and signed the peace treaty.

On Wednesday, Ramesh will require at least draw with Fominyh. But, according to the Chief Arbiter R.S. Tiwari, a clarification was being sought from FIDE, the governing body of the sport, pertaining to the rules regarding the making of a GM norm.

The rules stipulate the presence of 10 titled players from overseas in a norm-event. Here, the total number of titled players from overseas stands at nine. The picture is likely to become clear on Wednesday.

Assuming that Ramesh succeeds in making his final GM-norm, he will be required to raise his rating from the present 2466 to 2500 to become the country's 10th GM.

Meanwhile, Fominyh overwhelmed Varugeese Koshy in 34 moves after demonstrating some awesome play following the exchange of queens.

On the second board, Neelotpal gained a draw against Hari following the English Opening in 30 moves.

Hari looked better placed even after allowing Neelotpal the double-bishop advantage. Holding the initiative, Hari created a passed pawn after a series of exchanges. However, Hari probably let Neelotpal off the hook by trading the advanced pawn for his rival's doubled-pawn.

Eventually, the point was shared in an ending involving queens, opposite-coloured bishops and five pawns each.

P. Konguvel and Sriram Jha also held GMs on this day. Konguvel stopped Ukranian Sergei Ovsejevitsch in 48 moves, two less than what Sriram Jha needed against Bangladesh's Niaz Murshed.

The results (Indians unless stated):

Eighth round: Dmitry Svetushkin (Mol) (6.5) drew with R.B. Ramesh (7); Neelotpal Das (6.5) drew with P. Hari Krishna (6.5); Varugeese Koshy (6) lost to Alexander Fominyh (Rus) (7); Jonathan Rowson (Sco) (6) drew with Lanka Ravi (6); Surya Sekhar Ganguly (6.5) bt Shashikant Kutwal (5.5); P. Konguvel (6) drew with Sergei Ovsejevitsch (Ukr) (6); Niaz Murshed (Ban) (6) drew with Sriram Jha (6); Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb) (6) bt R. Balasubramanium (5.5); Abhijeet Kunte (5.5) drew with Aarthie Ramaswamy (5.5); Gurpreet Pal Singh (5) lost to Saidali Iuldashev (Uzb) (6); P.D.S. Girinath (5) lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) (6); K. Ratnakaran (5.5) drew with S. Kidambi (5.5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (6) bt Rishi Pal Singh (5); M.B. Muralidharan (6) bt Chandrashekhar Gokhale (5); Nisha Mohota (5) lost to Prathamesh Mokal (6); Manthan Chokshi (5.5) drew with Rahul Shetty (5.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5.5) drew with Vishal Sareen (5.5); V. Saravanan (5) lost to Deep Sengupta (6); S. Poobesh Anand (5.5) drew with Sayantan Dutta (5.5); Neeraj Mishra (6) bt Santosh Kumar Sinha (5); Diwakar Prasad Singh (5.5) drew with Nassir Wajih (5.5); Himanshu Sharma (6) bt Anupama Gokhale (5); Anup Deshmukh (6) bt Debayan Majumdar (5); Vedant Goswami (5) drew with M.R. Venkatesh (5); N. Sudhakar Babu (5) drew with D. Sai Srinivas (5); C. Natarajan (5) drew with Suvrajit Saha (5); B.S. Shivanandan (4.5) lost to Jayant Gokhale (4.5); Amit Pal Singh (5.5) bt G. Rohit (4.5); Amit Kumar Medda (4.5) lost to Akshayraj Kore (5.5); Atanu Lahiri (5.5) bt Suresh Kumar T.J. (4.5); Tania Sachdev (5) drew with G.B. Joshi (5); Somak Palit (5.5) bt V.S. Negi (4.5); Arman Monir (4.5) lost to Arghyadip Das (5.5); T. R. Shanmuganathan (4.5) lost to Valay Parikh (5.5); Rahul Sangma (5) drew with Soumitra Mujumdar (5); Jitendra Kumar Choudhary (5.5) bt Amardeep Bartakke (4.5); Syed Shazuli (5.5) bt Ishmeet Singh (4.5); P. Satyanarayan (4.5) lost to T.S. Ravi (5); Koneru Humpy (5) bt Dushyant Das (4); K. Visweswaran (5) bt Abhishek Das (4).

Leading pairings of ninth round: Ramesh-Fominyh; Svetushkin-Neelotpal; Hari-Ganguly; Shetty-Rowson; Mokal-Vakhidov; Iuldashev-Konguvel; Ovsejevitsch-Neeraj; Dzhumaev-Himanshu; Jha-Koshy; Lanka Ravi-Deshmukh.

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