Indian women win; men held

With Grandmaster Koneru Humpy back to her winnings ways, Indian eves outplayed Kazakhstan 2-1 to improve their ranking while their male counterparts, without Viswanathan Anand, played out a 2-2 draw against Uzbekistan in the ninth round of the 37th Chess Olympiad here.

Humpy came back strongly after a loss in the previous round to defeat Kazakh top player Daa Aketayeva while D Harika produced a much needed victory over Sofya Zigangirova. However, Swati Ghate failed to make it a clean sweep going down against untitled Gulmira Dauletova.

At the top of the table, defending champion China held top seed and overnight sole leader Russia to a draw. It turned out to be a big gain for Ukraine who scored a 2.5-0.5 victory over the United States to emerge as the new leader on 21 points with four rounds to go.

Humpy had to work hard for a victory against Dana Aketayeva who played safely with white pieces. The Indian opted for the Pirc defense and had a level position on board after Aketayeva employed a harmless Fianchetto variation.

Humpy was unpurturbed by exchanges in the middle game and marched her central pawn to create weaknesses in white’s position. The queens changed hands on the 45th move giving Humpy a tangible advantage with an extra pawn and she romped home after 63 moves.

The second seed Indian men came up with another mediocre performance and missed out on a victory over the lower ranked Uzbeks despite Krishnan Sasikiran, P Harikrishna, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Sandipan Chanda enjoying a better rating than their counterparts.

With just four rounds to go, the Indian men are clearly struggling on joint 10th spot with just 22.5 points. Meanwhile the Chinese men scored a surprising 4-0 victory over Georgia and jump to the second spot behind Armenia who continued its impressive run to down defending champion Ukraine by a 2.5-1.5 margin.

A rude shock awaited the top seed Russians as France fourth board Laurent Fressinet downed Sergey Rublevsky to lead the team to an emphatic 2.5-1.5 victory after the first three boards ended in draws. As things stand, Armenia retained its sole lead on 26.5 points while a full point adrift of them now are the Chinese men with 25.5 points in their bag.

Krishnan Sasikiran, playing with black, had a good game with former world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov even though the Queens Gambit Declined Slav variation encounter ended in a quick draw after 21 moves. In other matches against Uzbekistan, P Harikrishna was held by Aleksey Barsov, Surya Shekhar Ganguly split point with Timur Gareyev while Sandipan Chanda too shared the honours with Saidali Iuldachev.

Category: Chess , The Chess Olympiad