Three players share top spot in Open Chess tourney

Chennai, Aug 2 (UNI) Three players -- Chess Olympian Diwakar Prasad Singh of Jarkhand, former Tamil Nadu State Senior and Under-25 Champion Ram S Krishnan and a class-XI student, Karuppiah Narayanan -- share the top spot with 5.5 point each after six rounds in the Adyar Times New Millennium FIDE-Rated Open Chess Tournament here today.

Close behind the trio were, seven players, including two IMs K Murugan (NLC) and N Sudhakar Babu (Indian Bank), and five others, O T Anilkumar ( Kozhikode) (Chess trainer of K Narayanan), Rahul M Ved (Indian Bank) Vinod Kumar(Kanchi District) FM V Hariharan (Indian Bank) and Sagar Shah The maximum gathering to witness today's match was of course on the first table between D P Singh, Asian Under-14 gold medallists and S Nitin of Salem. It was neither a Benoni, nor the regular Kings Indian , but a queer queen pawn opening for D P Singh, who tantalised his young opponent but the nonchalant young Nitin faced the onslaughts to the maximum extent possible .

In a hair-splitting situation, Singh played a marvellous intermediary move by placing his queen in-between two castles, threatening to promote a queen afresh. Nitin had no other alternative but to resign in his 59th move.

K Narayanan, who had toppled the stalwarts like IM T S Ravi and O T Anil Kumar in the earlier rounds, caused yet another landmark upset by overwhelming the resistance of IM R R Laxman of Chennai. In a Catalan system of a lengthy 78 moves, Laxman was forced to give up his bishop in the end game.

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