Ganguly in hot pursuit
of final GM norm

Double Grandmaster-norm holder Surya Shekhar Ganguly technically outplayed GM Espig Lutz of Germany to move closer to his final GM norm, in the Czech Grandmaster Open chess tournament, in Pardubice, on Friday.

Third seed GM Zbynek Hracek added another twist in the tournament tale by defeating overnight leader GM Vladislav Borovikov of Ukraine to emerge the new leader with six points after the seventh round.

A pack of 15 hopefuls, including Ganguly, follow the leader with 5.5 points each while top seed GM Kkiran and GM P Harikrishna are among the next lot with 18 others.

Ganguly was in his element as he scalped Lutz. Playing white, the German got a neo Grunfeld Indian defence by transposition that has been Ganguly's cup of tea in the past few years. The Kolkata-based 22-year-old equalised comfortably in the ensuing middlegame and strove hard for an advantage as Lutz went for an ambitious plan and surrendered the Bishop pair in an open position and gave Ganguly a dangerous passed pawn in the center of the board.

After the exchange of heavy pieces, the players arrived at a Bishop versus Knight endgame with Lutz hoping for a miracle that did not happen.

In copybook fashion, Ganguly marched his king to the middle of the board and at the same time contained white from making a decisive advance of his pawns on the kingside. Lutz tried a few tricks towards the end but Ganguly tackled everything to perfection to romp home after 49 moves.

Sasikiran realised that being the top seed in a strong open tournament is not fun really as almost everyone is happy to draw with him. Fitting the bill was GM Marek Vokac of the Czech Republic.

In a Grunfeld Indian defence opening, Sasikiran, black, faced some difficulties in the initial phase of the game. However, as dust settled in the late middlegame, too many pieces were exchanged to guarantee any worthwhile advantage to Vokac. The draw was agreed to in 50 moves.

Harikrishna drew with GM Vladimir Potkin of Russia. It was a Tarrasch defence where Harikrishna did not get much of an advantage and settled for sharing the point after 33 moves.

Sandipan Chanda's GM norm aspirations suffered a setback as he went down to GM Lev Psakhis of Israel. The age old Keres attack against the Sicilian Scheveningen did the trick for Psakhis as Sandipan found himself struggling in the resulting endgame.

Once a second of Kasparov, Psakhis made no mistakes to win in 59 moves.

Dibyendu Barua was held to a draw by Sergei Berezjuk of the Czech Republic and bowed out of contention for top prizes.

Indian women players had a reasonably good day, with all of them drawing against higher rated opponents.