Indians have good day at Linares

The third round of the Linares International Open chess tournament proved to be a great one for Indians, with most of them registering upset victories over their higher rated opponents.

Visweswaran, IM R B Ramesh, Rahul Shetty, Sandipan Chanda and D K Sharma all won their games to move to two points while C S Gokhale recorded his first win in the tournament and opened his account.

An all-Indian game between Sriram Jha and IWM Aarthie Ramaswamy ended in a draw. Both have 1.5 points from three matches.

GM Vladimir Akopian lost to GM V Burmakin as his bad run continued in the tournament, which saw M Zulfigarli and IM I Herera taking the joint lead with three points each.

Visweswaran (2288 Elo points) started the day for India with a facile victory over IM Simonenko of Turkmenistan (2429) in a Kings Indian exchange variation game.

Visweswaran won a piece as early as move 16 and then sacrificed a pawn for better development of pieces. Simonenko wrongly moved his Bishop to the 'g3' square leaving his knight with no squares to return.

Visweswaran trapped the knight on the 'e5' square for just a pawn with cunning manoeuvre 'h5'and 'Nh7'. Simonenko resisted the onslaught for some time before resigning on the 62nd move.

Ramesh (2466) scored a lucky win over Shevelev (2354) of Israel in Schleiman variation. Playing white, he won a pawn very early in the opening but in the following opposite coloured bishop ending he opted for a wrong move that allowed his opponent more chances for effecting a draw.

However, Shevelev missed the opportunity and allowed Ramesh to promote his 'g' pawn and win the game in 64 moves.

Rahul Shetty (2325) scored an upset win over higher-rated IM Aleksander Wohl (2453) of Australia from the white side of a Sicilian defence.

Wohl made some dubious moves in the opening playing a rash 'h5' very early with his king in the centre and his pieces still undeveloped on the Queenside.

Shetty reacted well in the centre and won the 'h' pawn. He displayed sound technique in converting the material advantage to a win without giving much counter-chances to his opponent.

Aarthie (2262) held compatriot Sriram Jha (2409) to a creditable draw with the black pieces. The opening was a Kings Indian 'g3' system where Aarthie misplayed in the early middlegame to allow Jha some space advantage in the center and on the Queenside.

But Jha made a faulty exchange of pieces allowing Aarthie to exchange most of her pieces and even get a slightly better endgame. The position petered out to a draw in 55 moves.

Sandipan Chanda (2431) played a superb positional game with black pieces against Franco Alonso (2258) of Spain in a a Queens Gambit declined variation, which later got transposed to a Catalan setup.