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Journalism of Courage
India’s Abhijeet Gupta surged to the sole lead at the 21st Delhi International Chess Open after defeating Armenia’s Mamikon Gharibyan in the seventh round on Wednesday.
The sixth seed Gupta employed a free-flowing Ragozin Defense in their Queen’s Gambit Declined game, gaining a significant time advantage early on with white pieces. By the 21st move, Gupta had 35 minutes remaining compared to Gharibyan’s 23 minutes. The Indian grandmaster utilised both his time advantage and space on the board to pressure his opponent. By the 36th move, Gharibyan was down to just 21 seconds on his clock. Despite a stubborn defence, Gharibyan resigned on the 71st move after Gupta cornered his king.
With this win, Gupta moved to 6.5 points after seven rounds. He is now followed by eight players tied for second place at 6.0 points, including top seed SL Narayanan and Georgia’s Levan Pantsulaia, the highest-rated overseas player.
Narayanan, after starting his campaign with a spotless five out of five wins, drew his sixth round against Gupta on Tuesday and had a similar result on Wednesday against Russian GM Boris Savchenko. With a clear motive of a safe draw against Savchenko, Narayanan didn’t waste any energy and convinced his opponent to a three-fold repetition just by the 19th move.
Narayanan had 1 hour and 28 minutes on his clock at the final position. Two other Indians, IM Neelesh Saha and Aronyak Ghosh also find themselves on 6.0 points from seven rounds.
The second seed Diptayan Ghosh slipped to 11th position after his third straight draw of the event. In his seventh-round match against Russia’s Aleksej Aleksandrov, he mutually agreed to end the game, sharing the spoils in what was already a drawish position. He is on 5.5/7.
Among the top five boards, only one other match produced a decisive result, with Swedish GM Vitaly Sivuk defeating India’s untitled Alekhya Mukhopadhyay while playing white.
Gupta will take on another Armenian, Manuel Petrosyan, in the eighth round.
Among titled players, GM R R Laxman (205th rank) sits the lowest with 3.5 points. He missed the first round.
The Delhi Open is India’s biggest chess event, featuring nearly 2,500 players from more than 20 countries. The prize pool of the event is 1.21 crore.
