Upsets galore in Tata chess

Upsets continued to be the order of the day in the third round of the Tata International Chess tournament, with unheralded Vinod Bhagwat defeating British Open champion Abhijit Kunte and Arindam Mukherjee knocking off Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan.

As many as 14 players maintained their clean slate with an absolute score of three points apiece after the third round on Tuesday.

Prominent among them were Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna, Commonwealth champion Dibyendu Barua, Alexander Fominyh of Russia, Saidali Iuldashev of Uzbekistan, and the Bangladeshi duo of Niaz Murshed and Ziaur Rahman.

Vinod Bhagwat, who drew with top seeded GM Dmityy Svetushkin of Moldova in the second round, had another good result against Abhijit after the latter tried hard to make headway in a dynamically balanced position in the match yesterday.

Arindam opted for a side variation with white against Marat's Leningrad Dutch and troubled him right through the game with an imaginative attack. Marat's counter play bid did materialise in the middle game but Arindam was quite up to the task after the Uzbek erred decisively.

Important results Round 3 (Indians unless specified): P Harikrishna (3) beat Swati Ghate (2); S Arun Prasad (2.5) drew Tahir Vakhidov (Uzb, 2.5); Dibyendu Barua (3) beat Valay Parikh (2); O T Anil Kumar (2) lost to Saidali Iuldashev (Uzb, 3 ); Alexander Fominyh (Rus, 3) beat Manish Kumar (2); Abu Safin Shakin (Ban, 2) lost to Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 3); Sergei Ovsejevitsch (Ukr, 3) beat Y Syed Anwar Shazuli (2); Arindam Mukherjee (3) beat Dzhumaev Marat (Uzb, 2); R B Ramesh (2.5) drew Saurabh Kherdekar (2.5); Niaz Murshed (Ban, 3) beat Ravi Kumar (2) ; Rahul Sangma (2.5) drew S Roy Chowdhury (2.5); M R Venkatesh (3) beat Ketan Boricha (2); Jayant Gokhale (2) lost to Suvrajit Saha (3); Vishal Sareen (3) beat Mehdi Hasan (Ban, 3); C Natrajan (2.5) drew V Saravanan (2.5); D P Singh (2) lost to P Konguvel (3); Varugeese Koshy (3) beat K V Shantharam (2); Pradip Ghosh (2.5) drew Himanshu Sharma (2.5); A K Medda (2.5) drew Anup Deshmukh (2.5); R R Laxman (2.5) drew Pritam Singh (2.5); Kh. Aminul Islam (Ban, 2.5) drew Abhishek Das (2.5); P D S Girinath (3) beat Sujit Kumar Sinha (2); R Murlidharan (2.5) drew S Rishipal Singh (2.5); T S Ravi (2) drew Souvik Chakraborty (2.5); Vedant Goswami (1.5) lost to Dmitdy Svetushkin (Mda, 2.5); Vinod Bhagwat (2.5) beat Abhijit Kunte (1.5); N K Mishra (2.5) beat Tanmay Pathak (1.5).