GMs fall by the wayside

On a day of upsets,three Grandmasters suffered shock defeats from lower rated opponents while another six settled for draws after the sixth round of the 10th Parsvnath International Open Chess Tournament. Playing with white pieces,untitled Chinese player Zeng Chongsheng shocked third seed Martyn Kravtsiv of Ukraine while Debashis Das and Shreyans K Shah outwitted Henrik Danielsen of Iceland and Hoang Thanh Trang of Hungary respectively at the Ludlow Castle.

Among the Indian Grandmasters,former national champion Abhijit Kunte drew with Bitan Banerjee while Deepan Chakkravarthy,Neelotpal Das and R R Laxman had to be satisfied with half point against Diptayan Ghosh,Ankit Rajapara and Hemant Sharma respectively. Chandigarh youngster Himal Gusain held eighth seed Mikhailo Oleksienko to a creditable draw and second seed Aleksandrov Aleksej also settled for half point against Indian International Master P Karthikeyan.

Bucking the trend were Filipino Grandmasters Oliver Barbosa and Gomez John Paul who defeated Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan and Indian International Master Lalith Babu M R respectively in the sixth round to emerge as the joint leaders in on Wednesday.

International Master K Rathnakaran with a drift of half point from the leaders is at sole second position. In the sixth round,he defeated M S Thej Kumar. A pack of eight players including top seed Indian Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda,who beat Vishnu Prasanna in the sixth round match are at joint third position with five points.