Deepan Chakkravrathy emerged as the only threat to the overseas title-aspirants following a poor day for the leading Indian challengers in the Rs. 30-lakh Parsvnath International Open chess championship here on Wednesday.
In the eighth round, Deepan defeated fellow Tamil Nadu player S. Nitin in 30 moves to stay in the joint-second spot at 6.5 points, half a point behind leader Russian GM Mikhail Mozharov who outlasted N. Srinath in 73 moves.
With two rounds to go, Deepan finds himself in the company of two overnight joint leaders, second seed Ivan Popov (Russia), Andrey Baryshpolets (Ukraine) along with the victorious Vietnamese Nguyen Van Huy. Deepan made it after launching a fierce kingside offensive against Nitin while Mozharov became the sole leader after capitalizing on an extra pawn to outwit Srinath in the rook-and-pawn endgame.
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Van Huy gained a two-pawn advantage by the 31st move against Sahaj Grover and eventually converted his advantage into a valuable point after 78 moves.
Among the Indians playing the round with five points, K. Ratnakaran outplayed Ukrainian GM Valeriey Neverov (Ukraine) and Abhijit Kunte expectedly beat Ravi Teja, but P. Karthikeyan, Himanshu Sharma and Ramnath Bhuvanesh lost with black pieces against overseas Grandmasters.
A draw with GM Debashis Das helped C.R.G. Krishna complete his International Master requirements. Abhishek Kelkar drew with French GM Vladimir Lazarev to gain an IM-norm.
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The results (Indians unless stated): Eighth round: Andrey Baryshpolets (Ukr, 6.5) drew with Ivan Popov (Rus, 6.5); Mikhail Mozharov (Rus, 7) bt N. Srinath (6); Nguyen Van Huy (Vie, 6.5) bt Sahaj Grover (5.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (6.5) bt S. Nitin (5.5); Anton Demchenko (Rus, 6) bt P. Karthikeyan (5); Alberto David (Ita, 6) bt Himanshu Sharma (5); Cristhian Cruz (Per, 6) bt Ramnath Bhuvanesh (5); S. Satyapraygan (5.5) drew with Nguyen Duc Hoa (Vie, 5.5); C.R.G. Krishna (5.5) drew with Debashis Das (5.5); Valeriy Neverov (Ukr, 5) lost to K. Ratnakaran (6); Abhijit Kunte (6) bt S. Ravi Teja (5); Swati Ghate (5) lost to Neelotpal Das (6); Shardul Gagare (5.5) drew with Niranjan Navalgund (5.5); Krishna Teja (5.5) drew with S.L. Narayanan (5.5).