PANAJI: Goa’s woman grandmaster, Bhakti Kulkarni was once again held, and this time against Thaga Sheriff on the sixth day of Goa Chess Association’s 1st Goa International Open Grandmaster Chess Tournament being held at Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee indoor stadium on Thursday. Tanvi Hadkonkar, Aishwarya Thorat were the other Goans to record wins for the day.
On other boards, Goa’s Fide Master (FM) Nitish Belurkar and FM Ameya Audi remained impressive and put up a tough fight which ended in respective draws, sharing 5.5 points each.
Playing black, Nitish played a Fiancetto defence with Torre attack, to frustrate his opponent International Master Vardan Nagpal. On the other board, Ameya resorted to playing a Scotch game against FM Vinay Kumar Matta, an encounter which slipped out of his grasp later ending in a draw that lasted for 5 hours, the longest in the tournament.
Om Barde was on his beast as he beat former Kerala state champion Anilkumar OT, raising his Elo to 138 points. He now moves on to 4.5 points. Ritviz Parab beat Pradeep Tiwari to move on 5.5 points.
Three GMs — IDani Pouya, Neverov Veleriy and Babujian Levon share the leaderboard with seven points apiece.
International Master Sayantan Das outplayed GM Amonatov Farruk, where his black bishop steadly overtook the entire board 5, helping him register an easy win.
On board 4, GM Ivan Popov was beaten by GM Babujian Levon. Ivan made a wrong sacrifice in the rook due to the time pressure as he was more than an hour on the same.
IM Anup Deshmukh beat Bangladesh’s Rahman Ziaur in a stunning performance. On other boards, Grandmaster Bernadskiy Vitaliy (2547) beat veteran GM Neverov Valeriy and Chess Master Aditya Mittal and Fide Master Jubin Jimmy drew against GM Tukhaev Adam and GM Predke Alexandr respectively in Round 8.