Fourteen seed GM Valeriy Neverov of Ukraine defeated India’s IM Saptarshi Roy to end the year on a bright note by emerging as the sole leader at the end of the fifth round matches of the Open event in the 2nd IIFL Wealth Mumbai International Chess Tournament and played at the Mount Litera International School at BKC, Bandra.
GM Valeriy Neverov
The other overnight joint leaders — Sayantan Das, Shyaamnikhil P., Tarun V Kanth drew their respective games.
The game on the first board saw Neverov piited against Saptarashi Roy of West Bengal with the black pieces. The game was a complicated Sicilian Richter-Rauzer, where Roy went gung ho on the kingside to build a mighty attack. Neverov defended resourcefully, although he later admitted he could have defended better. And then, in a dynamically equal ending, Saptarshi Roy made some wrong moves which proved costly and went on to end up on the losing side.
Shyaamnikhil and Sayantan played an interesting game as well with a curious endgame where Shyaamnikhil with white had a king and a rook advantage while Sayantan had a bishop, two pawns, and the king, with black. After some close monitoring by both players they decide to call a truce.
Tarun V Kanth settled for a draw with Akash Thakur who is rated about 300 points above the former. This means that Valeriy Neverov with 4.5 points enjoys a comfortable half-point lead after five rounds of play. Tarun, Shyaamnikhil and Sayantan have 4 points each and are in joint second position.
In the junior category event, Indian lad Sankarsha Shelke of Ahmednagar continues to dominate the tournament by successfully defeating the top seed Gukesh D. of Andhra Pradesh. Sankarsha, playing with the black pieces, employed the Sicilian attack where Gukesh chose to avoid the main lines. The position eventually reached a hanging pawn structure where all Gukesh’s pieces turned out to be misplaced. Sankarsha thus won a crucial encounter to solidify his half-point lead and is closely followed by the top seed Gukesh.
Results – Open category (round-5, top 10 boards): IM Saptarshi Roy (2418, IND) 3 lost to GM Neverov Valeriy (2478, UKR) 4.5; IM Shyaamnikhil P (2451, IND) 4 drew with IM Das Sayantan (2371, IND) 4; Tarun V Kanth (1943, IND) 4 drew with FM Thakur Akash (2369, IND) 3.5; IM Narayanan Srinath (2490,IND) 3.5 drew with GM Sandipan Chanda (2593,IND) 3.5; GM Ghosh Diptayan (2570, IND) 3.5 bt WGM Toma Katarzyna (2322,POL) 3; GM Stopa Jacek (2479,POL) 3.5 lost to GM Bernadskiy Vitaliy (2540, UKR) 3; GM Tukhaev Adam (2516,UKR) 3.5 drew with Saravana Krishnan P. (2293, IND); IM Ravi Teja S. (2384, IND) 3.5 drew with GM Malakhatko Vadim (2507,BEL)3; Akash Pc Iyer (2225, IND) 3 lost to GM David Alberto ( 2574, ITA) 3; Debarshi Mukherjee (2194, IND) 3 drew with GM Czebe Attila (2500,HUN) 3.