Press Trust of India
Gibraltar, Jan 30: Debashis Das and Padmini Rout of Orissa hold their respective opponents in the third round of the Mastr’s section of Gibraltar chess festival, here Friday. Debashis (2) drew with Johan Salomon of Norway, while Padmini (2) held Ruben Felgaer of Argentina.
Grandmaster M R Lalith Babu caused a major upset by defeating defending champion Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria. With his third victory in as many games, Lalith Babu remained in joint lead and the victory against Cheparinov served as a confidence booster for the Indian who has been struggling for some time. It was a Semi Slav defense in which Lalith Babu allowed level play to Heparinov who played black.
With seven rounds still to come in the 175000 Pounds Sterling Festival, there are as many as 13 players sharing the lead and three Indians among them. Apart from Babu, highest rated Indian P Harikrishna and B Adhiban maintained a clean slate at the expense of Ioan-Cristian Chirila of Romania and Alexander Donchenko of Germany.
Among other Indians in the fray, Vishnu Prasanna continued with his fine run on the tournament and held Daniel Naroditsky of United States to a draw while the all-Indian duel between M R Venkatesh and Surya Shekhar Ganguly also reached the same result. Prasanna, Venkatesh and Ganguly have all got 2.5 points apart from Deep Sengupta who accounted for Robert Bellin of England.
