Press Trust of India
Gibraltar: Orissa Grandmaster Debashis Das came up with his best performance ever to hold former World Champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria to a creditable draw in the second round of the Masters’ section of Gibraltar Chess festival, here Thursday.
On a day of upsets, Indian Grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna defeated highly regarded Grandmaster Emil Sutovsky of Israel while former world junior girls’ champion Soumya Swaminathan came with an inspired performance to beat American Kayden Troff to maintain a clean slate after two games.
It was business as usual for some of the higher-ranked players but highest-rated Indian P Harikrishna had to show his endgame-magic before he could secure his second victory in the tournament against Quinten Ducarmon of Holland in 52 moves.
The day however belonged to Debashis. It was a Nimzo Indian Classical in which Topalov tried a lot of tricks in the middle game. Starting with a piece sacrifice on the 25th move the Bulgarian ripped apart white’s position on the King’s side but Debashis came up with some remarkable counter play to keep himself in the game.
The Indian was undeterred by the close to 300 rating points different between the two and even allowed Topalov to make a second Queen when the position reached an exciting finish. When the dust subsided Topalov had an extra queen but Das had three more pieces. The draw was signed on move 46.
