CHESS: PETROSIAN WINS TITLE

Indiatimes, India
March 7 2007

KOLKATA, March 6: Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian of Armenia played a
lightning draw to emerge champions with eight points and pocket the
first prize of Rs 2.07 lakh in the Kolkata Open 2007-Grandmaster
Chess Tournament on Tuesday.

However, Petrosian had to wait anxiously for the second board game
between Darmen Sadvakasov (7.5) of Kazakhstan and Alon Greenfeld (6.5)
of Israel to be completed, to assure himself of the sole first prize.

Overnight leader Petrosian took a eight-move draw against GM Dimitri
Komarov (7) of Ukraine on the top board, in order to assure himself
of at least a share of the top prize.

It was then an anxious four-hour wait for the Armenian, as a victory
would have made Sadvakasov tied on points with him.

Sadvakasov tried to break down the defences of his Israeli opponent
from the black side of a Reti opening, but gave up the struggle and
took the peace offering on the 38th move in a sterile position.

Top seeded GM Serjei Tiviakov (7.5) of the Netherlands defeated GM
Abhijit Kunte (6) in a fine positional game to tie for the second
position with Sadvakasov.

Kunte tried the solid berling defence against the Ruy Lopez Opening
of the Dutch player, but he missed a tractic and his Kingside Pawn
structure was shattered. Thereafter the top seed continued to pick
up the weak pawns to force the resignation of the Indian GM on the
61st move.

The victory enabled Tiviakov obtain the second spot because of a
better tie-break. The ties were resolved on the basis of the average
ratings of the opponents of a player.

Sadvakasov had to be content with the third place.

GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly (7) won a long game against GM Mikheil
Kekilidze (6) of Georgia to finish a respectable seventh. It was a good
result for the National Champion considering his indifferent start.
IM Sriram Jha (7) and G N Gopal (7) won against IM Sundarajan Kidambi
(6) and Safin Sukhrat (6) respectively. Jha finished fourth, while
Gopal secured the fifth place.