Indian sports wrap, June 12: Nikitenko joins Abhijeet in lead at Delhi GM Open with win over Paichadze
CHESS
Nikitenko joins Abhijeet in lead at Delhi GM Open with win over Paichadze
Grandmaster Mihail Nikitenko beat Grandmaster Luka Paichadze to join Abhijeet Gupta in the lead with seven points at the end of the eighth round in the Delhi GM Open chess tournament at the Tivoli Gardens, Chhattarpur, on Thursday.
In an even battle, Nikitenko hooked a knight on the 55th move and Paichadze promptly resigned.
Overnight sole leader Abhijeet drew with Manuel Petrosyan to reach 6.5 points, with two more rounds to go in the Swiss League competition.
In the ninth round, Nikitenko will play black against Abhijeet. There were 12 players with 6.5 points and 16 players with six points, which could lead to a very lively climax. On the second board, Mamikon Gharibyan will play top seed SL Narayanan. Diptayan Ghosh will play Van Huy Nguyen.
The results (eighth round):
Manuel Petrosyan 6.5 drew with Abhijeet Gupta 7; SL Narayanan 6.5 drew with Neelash Saha 6.5; Mihail NIkitenko 7 bt Luka Paichadze 6; Aronyak Ghosh 6.5 drew with Vitaly Sivuk 6.5; Diptayan Ghosh 6.5 bt Boris Savchenko 6; Aditya Samant 6.5 bt Saravana Krishnan 5.5; Mamikon Gharibyan 6.5 bt Abhishek Kelkar 5.5; Mikulas Manik 6 drew with Adarsh Sriram 6; Viresh Sharnarthi 6.5 bt Hari Madhavan 5.5; Amit Agrawal 5.5 lost to Aleksej Aleksandrov 6.5; EU Ahaz 5.5 lost to Van Huy Nguyen 6.5; Semetei Tegin 6 drew with Arnav Agrawal 6; S Nitin 6.5 bt Soham Roy 5.5; Alok Sinha 5 lost to Karthik Venkataraman 6; Deepan Chakkravarthy 6 bt Harshit Sahu 5; Alekhya Mukhopadhyay 5 lost to Harsh Suresh 6.
-Kamesh Srinivasan