Kunte moves to second place

Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte scored a fine victory over local favourite GM Jonathan Rowson to move to joint second place after the seventh round in the Smith and Willamson British chess championship in Birmingham, Scotland, on Tuesday.

Grandmaster Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh put it across local star Paul Motwani and regained sole lead on six points.

Grandmaster Peter Wells of England and the Indian trio of Kunte, Pendyala Harikrishna and Commonwealth women's champion S Vijayalakshmi are half a point adrift of the leader.

It turned out to be an excellent day for the Indians on the top boards. Harikrishna gave an endgame lesson to Daniel  Gormally of England while double GM norm holder Tejas Bakre accounted for another Englishman, Stuart Conquest.

Vijayalakshmi was also in full swing, getting the better of GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly.

The woes of Dibyendu Barua, however, continued as he lost yet another game, his third in the championship so far.

Swati Ghate continued with her 'drawing-act' and signed peace with compatriot International Master Sunderrajan  Kidambi. Swati is assured of her Women Grandmaster norm now although she is still to play two more games. As per FIDE rules, a Swiss tournament norm is minimum of 9 games.

For her maiden IM norm, however, Swati will need to add some points depending upon her opposition in the next two rounds.

Among the other Indian women in fray, national women's champion Aarthie Ramaswamy failed to tackle David Eggleston of England and went down after an intense struggle while Nisha Mohota and Eesha Karavade met with similar fate against Englishmen Jack Rudd and Peter Sowray respectively.

S Meenakshi warded off the challenge of Kenneth Mcewan of Scotland and moved to 3.5 points.

Kunte matched Rowson move for move in a lopsided game that featured the established manoeuvres of the English attack against Sicilian Taimanov. Restoring faith in the solid and relatively safer king in the center, he sacrificed one pawn on each wing and worked his counter attack in copybook fashion.

An attack against the king is always difficult to handle and Rowson realised it pretty soon as his pieces fell apart in holding the position together. It was a case of divided forces that propelled Kunte's queen to get in to the demolition act and soon Rowson's king was on the run. Left with no hope, Rowson called it a day after 35 moves.

Endgames have always been Harikrishna's forte and his technique kept him in good stead against Gormally. Playing  black, Harikrishna opted for the Stenitz variation of the Ruy Lopez that does not really find favour from the elite players  these days.

However, it worked as a good surprise weapon against Gormally, who appeared at sea in working out the variation. By the 16th move itself, three minor pieces and Queen changed hands, giving the indication that the game might lead to a draw soon.

Harikrishna worked his way towards glory in masterly fashion thereon. Keeping pawns on both wings, the Hyderabad-ased player used his missile-like Bishop on an open board to great effect and paralysed Gormally's pieces.

The English IM lost a pawn and never recovered despite just three pawns remaining on board. The game lasted 50 moves.

It was a day of black victories on the first four boards and the major beneficiary was Ziaur Rahman, who toppled Paul Motwani from an innocuous position arising out of a Pirc defence. It was on the 25th move that Rahman came up with an astonishing knight sacrifice that left Motwani defenceless.

Rahaman wrapped the issue just 12 moves later.

The other big victor was Peter Wells, who beat top seed Vassilos Kotronias of Cyprus from the black side of a Caro Kann defence. Kotronias had some advantage but fumbled to end up with a pawn less in the endgame which proved sufficient for Wells.

Important results (Indians unless specified):

Round 7: Paul Motwani (5, Sco) lost to Ziaur Rahman (6, Ban); Vassilios Kotronias (4.5, Cyp) lost to Peter Wells (5.5, Eng); Daniel Gormally (4.5, Eng) lost to P Harikrishna (5.5); Jonathan Rowson (4.5, Sco) lost to Abhijit Kunte (5.5); S Vijayalakshmi (5.5) beat Surya Shekhar Ganguly (4.5); Joseph Gallagher (5, Sui) drew Arakhamia-Grant Ketevan (5, Geo); Stuart Conquest (4, Eng) lost to Tejas Bakre (5); Simon Ansell (4, Eng) lost to Matthew Turner (5, Eng); Steve Mannion (4, Sco) lost to Aaron Summerscale (5, Eng); Reefat Bin Sattar (4.5, Ban) drew Gurpreet Pal Singh (4.5); Swati Ghate (4.5) drew Sundararajan Kidambi (4.5); Nicholas Pert (4.5, Eng) beat Alexander Longson (3.5, Eng); Simon Buckley (4, Eng) beat Dibyendu Barua (3); David Eggleston (4, Eng) beat Aarthie Ramaswamy (3); Jack Rudd (4, Eng) beat Nisha Mohota (3); Martyn Goodger (2.5, Eng) lost to Neelotpal Das (3.5); Peter Sowray (3.5, Eng) beat Eesha Karavade (2.5); S Meenakshi (3.5) beat Kenneth Mcewan (2.5, Sco).