Sarvanan becomes sole leader

Sarvanan becomes sole leader
UNITED NEWS OF INDIA

Andorra, June 28: International Masters V Sarvanan and RB Ramesh scored against their higher-rated opponents in the fourth round of the 18th Andorra Open chess championship here.

Sarvanan shot into sole lead at four points beating WGM A Stefenova of Bulgaria with the white pieces in a Sicilian Paulsen opening. Stefenova erred early in the opening to allow Sarvanan to attack the queen side with the pawn push 4a44 and gain a lot of tempos attacking her queen.

Sarvanan then kept the pressure to win an exchange in the middle game. He then returned it to transpose TPO a winning ending. Stefenova resigned on the 47th move.

Ramesh prevailed over GM Al Modiahki from the black side of a Sicilian Classical (G3 variation) to take his score to 3.5 points. In a typical Sicilian game, Ramesh piled up his major pieces on the 4C4 file to attack the backward C pawn. Ramesh then refused a draw offer on the 23rd move and exchanged the queens to reach a favourable ending. He then won two pawns to win the game in 56 moves.

Important results (fourth round): V Sarvanan (4) bt WGM A Stefenova (3), RB Ramesh (3.5) bt GM Al Modiahki (2.5), Vedant Goswami (2.5) drew IM Jirovsjy (2.5), Narciso Dublan (3.5) drew GM Lev Pshakis (3.5), GM Alexi Kuzmin (3.5) bt Petr Velicka (2.5), Ivaniv Jordan (3) drew GM Daniel Campora (3), GM Bogdan Lalic (3) bt Ruben Gallego (2), IM D Tyomkin (3) bt Gonzalez de la Torre (2).