Pune, Jul 1 (PTI) Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta and USA’s Vaidyanathan Kannan recorded their second consecutive wins to emerge joint leaders in the Pune International Grandmaster Round Robin Chess Tournament, here on Wednesday.
The 13-year-old Kannan from USA registered a victory over GM Aleksey Fedorov from Belarus.
Playing with the white pieces, Kannan opened with the King’s Indian Attack. An early positional error by Fedorov, who misplaced his bishop, allowed Kannan to seize the initiative and build pressure, and eventually force his opponent to resign on the 31st move.
Top seeded Gupta recorded a convincing victory over Ashwath S. Playing with the white pieces against Ashwath’s King’s Indian defence, Gupta steadily increased the pressure and capitalised
on the 23rd move.
He launched a powerful assault on the black king on move 26, leaving Ashwath to resign shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, India’s Kushagra Mohan caused an upset by defeating GM Aleksey Alexandrov.
Akshay Borgaonkar drew with compatriot Advik Agarwal, while Sri Lanka’s LMST de Silva shared points with India’s Nitish Belurkar. PTI DDV SSC SSC
/images/ppid_59c68470-image-178313752303110858.webp)
