Sasikiran draws with White, goes out of reckoning

Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran lost his semi-final against GM Etienne Bacrot of France 0.5-1.5 after he drew his second game with white pieces in the Olympic Capital Young Masters Chess tournament here.

Sasikiran had lost to Bacrot playing black in the first match of the semi-finals. He will now play IM Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine for the third place.

Double GM norm holder IM P Harikrishna's prospects too suffered a setback as he went down to GM Levon Aronian of Armenia in tie-break games.

In the other semi-final, GM Gbruzan Lazarov of Spain ended Ukrainian IM Andrei Volokitin's party with a technical victory to advance to the final. Lazarov will play Bacrot in the two-games final starting tomorrow.

Sasikiran was under pressure as he had to win to force a tie-break playoff. Playing white, Sasikiran started with his pet Queen pawn and faced the sharp Grunfeld defence.

The game went along known theory of the Hungarian variation and Sasikiran seemed to have a miniscule advantage due to his better pawn structure. The king side breakthrough was followed with a queenside onslaught and Sasikiran's rook lift was exciting but Bacrot was equal to the task in the complexities that ensued.

With precise defence Bacrot converted the game into a Rook and minor pieces endgame where the Indian retained the advantage with a well placed Bishop. However, with too few pawns on board the result was never in doubt.

In the Harikrishna vs Aronian match, after winning the first game, Harikrishna just had to draw his second match but he lost by falling into a well known opening trap in the Sicilian Sveshnikov variation with black pieces.

Aronian cashed in on the opportunity and won a pawn by force. Further attempts by Harikrishna to complicate the battle were thwarted easily and the stage was set for the tiebreak games.

Harikrishna's lack of exposure in the faster version cast the die in Aronian's favour as the first game was drawn in the Bogo Indian defence where the former played with white pieces.

The Bishop pair did not yield the same advantage this time for Harkrishna as Aronian maintained a near symmetrical pawn structure to force the draw.

In the second game, Aronian opened with the Reti opening and got a slight advantage following an inaccuracy by Harikrishna in the early middlgame. With a perfect king pawn march Aronian managed to breakthrough in the centre and Harikrishna lost a pawn without much compensation.