Nine players share lead

May 18: Nine players, IM P Kongwel ONGC, IM Andrew Webster England, IM Tejas Bakre, IWM S Vijayalaxmi both IA, IM NS Babu IB, TS Ravi IOC, Vishal Sareen LIC, IM SS Tilak UBI and K Gunasekaran TN share the lead with 7 points after nine rounds in the SK Vaidya Memorial International Rating Chess Tournament being played here.

Overnight joint leader S Satyapragyan of Orissa suffered his first loss in the tournament when he went down to TS Ravi in a Sicilian Alapin opening with black pieces. Konguvel defeated SS Ganguly in a rarely played variation of the Ruy Lopez with white pieces. Webstar played a positional masterpiece to outplay GB Joshi IA from an English opening. Vishal Sareen drew with Tilak in a Sicilian Alapin with game while Bakre8217;s opening preparation came to the fore as he methodically outplayed IM Anup Deshmukh.

Vijayalaxmi was lucky as DK Sharma blundered a pieces in a superior middlegame position. Babu gave an endgame lesson to Hari Om Sharma while Gunasekaran accounted forRoktim Bandhopadhyay with black pieces.