Chandran stuns Alexandrov

Emerges joint leader alongside, Shanglei, Kuderinov and Lalith with 3.5 points.

Grandmaster P Magesh Chandran defeated Aleksej Alexandrov of Belarus in the fourth round of 11th Parsvnath International Chess festival at Ludlow Castle Sports Complex on Monday. The Indian Grandmaster benefitted from a blunder by Alexandrov in a level position after the latter fell short of time out of a Nimzo Indian defense game.

Playing white, Magesh was ready to repeat moves early in the opening as he thought a draw as black would have been a good result on the top board. Alexandrov, however went for a complicated struggle instead but lost valuable time in deciding whether he wanted to go for it. As a result, Magesh had 40 extra minutes on the clock which, in the opinion of the winner, was the deciding factor behind his victory.

Lu Shanglei of China, Kirill Kuderinov of Kazakhstan and M R Lalith Babu emerged as the new co-leaders along with Magesh on 3.5 points apiece after the end of the fourth round of the Rs. 1.1 million prize money tournament.

With six rounds still to go, as many as 20 players follow the four leaders half a point behind. It turned out to be a good day for Commonwealth champion Lalith Babu as he scored an important victory over Grandmaster Raset Ziatdinov of United States. Lu Shanglei defeated G A Stany out of a Sicilian Rossolimo and it was a pretty clean effort by the Chinese Grandmaster who played with white pieces.

Kudrinov defeated V Vishnu Prasanna. The young trio of Arvindh Chithambaram, S L Narayanan and Murali Karthikeyan continued to impress with their fine run in the fourth round.

While Chithambaram held Grandmaster Abhijeet Kunte to a draw, Narayanan had little difficulty in splitting the point with GM Sahaj Grover. Murali Karthikeyan also came good signing peace with German Grandmaster Henrik Teske.

... contd.

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