Mumbai, June 16: IM Soham Kamotra caused a flutter at the 360 ONE Global Chess Festival, displaying a strong defence to halt Iniyan Pa’s winning streak in the sixth round of the Masters section at the World Trade Centre.
Iniyan had been in blistering form, winning all his first five games and looked set to score his sixth successive victory in the early stages of his game, but lost his way and had to settle for a draw against Kamotra, who incidentally is the first and only International Master (IM) from Jammu and Kashmir.
Iniyan, with 5.5 points, however, holds onto a slender half-point lead over second-placed Aakashchandra Dalvi, while Kamotra, Ayush Sharma and Harsh Suresh are bunched behind with 4.5 points each.
Kamotra Ends Iniyan’s Winning Run
In other results, GM Abhijit Gupta broke the three-game winning streak of prodigy WIM Oshini Gunawardhana Devindya.
Ajay Santhosh Parvathareddy squandered a winning position to end on the losing side against Aakash Sharadchandra Dalvi in another important result. IM Akshay Borgaonkar held higher-rated GM Alexander Aleksej to a draw. IM Mohan Kushagra was shocked by compatriot FM Adak Bivor.
Sharnarthi And Madhvendra Continue Dominance
Viresh Sharnarthi and Madhvendra Pratap Sharma scored their sixth consecutive victories to lead the Challenger and Junior categories respectively with six points each.
Nithin Babu, Arul Anand and Swain Aashirwad are trailing Sharnarthi by just half a point. Madhvendra has built a one-point lead over Ankit Das, Vinayak Kolluru, A Amanlal, Nijesh R and Amber Gangwal.
Kamotra Defends Resolutely Against Tournament Leader
Kamotra was caught off guard in an English Opening game against Iniyan, and Iniyan’s pieces were comfortably placed. Incidentally, both players failed to make accurate moves. Kamotra, however, got his act together, exchanged pieces and defended tenaciously to earn a precious half-point.
Abhijit Gupta adopted the Sicilian Defence against Oshini, and the latter made her intentions obvious by trying to force a draw right from the early stages. Exchanging pieces at every possible opportunity, Oshini was quick to steer the game into the ending phase, where each had double rooks, a minor piece and an identical number of pawns by the 14th turn.
A dubious pawn advance after castling on the queen side landed Oshini in trouble, and the seasoned GM ensured that there were no hiccups before pocketing the point on the 41st turn.
Leaders Maintain Their Momentum
Nagarkatte Vedant also managed an advantage in the opening stages against Viresh Sharnarthi until a wrong queen move on the 17th turn. Sharnarthi did hold an edge after the exchange of queens, but by the 55th turn, a rook-and-two-pawns-each ending indicated that the game might end in a draw. Nagarkatte mishandled the ending and lost out after 76 moves.
The game between Madhvendra and Heet Baldawa in a Sicilian Defence was a rather one-sided affair, which Madhvendra clinched after 63 moves.
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Results
Soham Kamotra (½) drew with Iniyan Pa (½)
Ajay Santhosh Parvathareddy (0) lost to Aakash Sharadchandra Dalvi (1)
Gorovets Andrey (½) drew with Nitish Belurkar (½)
Fedorov Alexei (½) drew with Savchenko Boris (½)
Ayush Sharma (1) beat Slizhevsky Alexander (0)
Gochelashvili David (0) lost to Harsh Suresh (1)
