Indian men beat Germany, women defeat Slovenia in Chess Olympiad

Turin, May 28 (UNI) Viswanathan Anand was once again held to a draw but P Harikrishna and National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly won their games to beat Germany 3-1, while Swati Ghate sealed a third successive win to lead the women to a 2-1 victory over Slovenia in the sixth round of the 37th Chess Olympiad here.

Anand and K Sasikiran, both playing with black, were held by the lower rated Arkadij Naiditsch and Artur Jussupow before Harikrishna and Ganguly won their matches against Christopher Lutz and Alexander Graf to seal a 3-1 victory for the Indians.

Playing on the third board, former Junior World Champion Harikrishna faced Lutz of Germany with his black pieces in a Ruy Lopez opening pattern and the Indian played brilliantly in the middle game to win the match after 74 moves.

''I played a good attacking game on the King Side and won the game. It is a very important 3-1 victory against a strong Germany.

Our loss against Morocco was very disappointing, however, we recovered by winning two matches 4-0 and now we will do better,'' Harikrishna told UNI after his game.

In the fourth board game, Ganguly -- playing with white -- kept attacking the king side weaknesses of his opponent Graf, who played good moves for some time but in the end was forced to surrender after 28 moves.

''It was a brilliant game. It is good that I am playing well here but I am not that excited because in the last Olympiad we were doing well but some of us could not carry on in the later stages. So this time I want to concentrate on my games and win a medal for India,'' Ganguly told UNI.

In the women's section, Swati registered her third consecutive win by beating Ksenija Novak but Koneru Humpy and Donnavili Harika drew their games against the other two members of the Slovenian team.

Humpy played well against Anna Muzychuk but missed a good position by carrying the game too long and failed to force a win.

In an important clash in the men's section, Russia were shocked by Netherlands, who beat them 2.5-1.5, despite the top seeds being led by none other than Vladimir Kramnik.

but Russian girls maintained their superiority by defeating Hungary 2-1.

Armenia -- with 18 points -- is now the sole leader in the men's section while in the women's section Russia continues to lead the table. Indian women with 13 points are on the third spot while their men counterparts are joint fifth with 16.5 points from six rounds.

Results round 6 Men: Netherlands beat Russia 2.5-1.5 Armenia beat Uzbekistan 2.5-1.5 Sweden beat Bulgaria 2.5-1.5 Ukraine beat Iran 2.5-1.5 Belarus beat Spain 3-1 USA beat China 2.5-1.5 Brazil beat Greece 2.5-1.5 India beat Germany 3-1 Georgia beat Scotland 3-1 Denmark beat Croatia 2.5-1.5 Czech Republic beat Slovakia 3-1 Israel beat Romania 3-1 Indonesia beat Iceland 2.5-1.5 Results round 6 women: Russia beat Hungary 2-1 Ukraine beat Spain 2-1 USA beat Mongolia 2-1 Romania beat Armenia 2-1 India beat Slovenia 2-1 Bulgaria beat Kazakhstan 2-1 Slovakia beat Lithuania 3-0 Estonia beat El Salvador 2.5-0.5 Latvia beat Germany 2-1 Serbia&Montenegro drew with Vietnam 1.5-1.5 Italy A drew with Cuba 1.5-1.5 UNI XC PM RR RK1056