Second-seeded FM Sajandas Joshi and seventh seed Ketan Patil share the lead at the end of the sixth round in the SBI Life FIDE Rating Chess Tournament, and played at the Russian Cultural Centre.
FM Joshi was in sparkling form as he played a perfect game to defeat Gopal Rathod from the black side of French defence in 54 moves. Not only did he equalize easily in the middle game but also managed to earn better placements for his pieces. A mistake from Gopal on move 26 allowed Joshi to win a pawn and he then pressed home the advantage with regular trading to win the game easily.
On the second board, the fine giant-killing run of young Malay Krishna came to an end by Ketan Patil who took full advantage of some listless play by by the youngster to score a victory in 52 moves.
The round also saw decisive results as top-seed Atul Dahale defeated 10-year old Ritvik Krishnan in just 22 moves from the Queen pawn game while third seeded Amadeep Bartakke stopped the winning sequence of 12-year old Devika Raul in 48 moves from the Ruy Lopez opening.
Sanjeev Mishra and Pratik Gengaje also scored victories over Kartik Chinnam and Prajapal Shendre respectively to join Atul Dahale and Amardeep Bartakke in second position with a score of 5/6 while a group of 6-players are lying on the third spot with a score of 4.5/6.
Three more rounds remain to be played in this Rs one lakh prize money tourney, which is being organized by Indian Chess School and played at Cultural Centre of Russia.
Key Results of (Round 6): Gopal Rathod (4.5) Lost to FM S.G. Joshi S G (5.5); Malay Krishna (4.5) lost to Patil Ketan (5.5); Atul Dahale (5) beat Krishnan Ritvik (4); Bartakke Amardeep S (5) beat Devika Raul (4); Sanjeev Mishra (5) beat Chinnam Kartik (4); Prajapal Shendre (4) lost to Gengaje Pratik (5); Shah Sparsh (4) lost to Kalsekar Ajit (4.5); Joshi Tejas (4.5) beat Bang Atharva (3.5); Iyer A N (3.5) Lost to Akshit Jha (4.5); Shirish Khodwe (4.5) beat Saksham Arora (3.5).