Commonwealth champion Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua won the Tata International Open Chess tournament in Jamshedpur on Monday after a quick draw with GM Saidali Iuldashev of Uzbekistan in the 11th and final round.
Barua and Grandmaster Alexander Fominyh of Russia scored nine points each out of a possible 11, but Barua won the title as he had a much better progressive score thanks to his brilliant 6/6 start in the tournament.
After a three-way tie for the third spot, Iuldashev had the best tie-break score and was declared third while Sergei Ovsejevitsch of Ukraine finished fourth.
Deep Sengupta was the surprise packet amongst the top ten as he turned table on Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan in the final round and finished fifth in the overall standings.
Deep also had the distinction of grabbing his second International Master norm in the process and is now just one norm away from becoming an International Master.
Also earning his maiden International Master norm was Valay Parikh, who lost in the final round against Ovsejevitsch.
Six players -- GM Pendyala Harikrishna, GM Abhijit Kunte, GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh, GM Dmitry Svetushkin of Moldova, IM Tahir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan and Parsvnath chess champion R B Ramesh were tied for 6-11th places.
The final round was not devoid of excitement except on the top board where Barua and Iuldashev played only for a couple of minutes.
Fominyh had to use all his experience against GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly, who missed out on some promising continuations in the middle game arising out of a Sicilian defence.
Playing black, Fominyh's king was stranded in the centre and only timely exchanges by the Russian enabled him to neutralize white's advantage. In the ensuing endgame, Ganguly was gradually outplayed.
Sengupta was very lucky against Dzhumaev, who showed his class in the middle game to get an overwhelming position. However, Sengupta just hung in there by making precise defensive moves and, much to his relief Dzhumaev ultimately lost the game under time pressure.
Harikrishna beat IM V Saravanan in a complicated game arising out of an irregular opening where the former played white. Saravanan was pushed to the wall in the middle game but came out well under pressure to reach what should have been a drawn endgame.
Hari's perseverance paid off as he caught Saravanan's king in a mating net.
Important results of the last round (Indians unless specified): Saidali Iuldashev (8.5, Uzb) drew Dibyendu Barua (9); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (7.5) lost to Alexander Fominyh (9, Rus); R B Ramesh (8) drew Tahir Vakhidov (8, Uzb); Sergei Ovsejevitsch (8.5, Ukr) beat Valay Parikh (7.5); Marat Dzhumaev (7.5, Uzb) lost to Deep Sengupta (8.5); Dmitry Svetushkin (8, Mda) beat T S Ravi (7); P Harikrishna (8) beat V Saravanan (7); Abhjit Kunte (8) beat Himashu Sharma (7); K Visweswaran (7) lost to Ziaur Rahman (8, Ban); V Koshy (7.5) drew S Kidambi (7.5); R Balasubramanium (7.5) drew S Roy Chowdhury (7.5); Niaz Murshed (7.5, Ban) beat Arghyadip Das (6.5); Arindam Mukherjee (7) drew M R Venkatesh (7); Saif Uddin (7.5) beat Rahul Shetty (6.5); R Preetham Sharma (7) drew Vishal Sareen (7); Vedant Goswami (7) drew P Konguvel (7); J S Gokhale (7) drew Anup Deshmukh (7); M S Rao (7) drew Arman Monir (7, Ban); J M Rao (6.5) lost to R R Laxman (7.5); Atanu Lahiri (7.5) beat M K Panigrahi (6.5); Pradip Ghosh (7) drew Swati Ghate (7); Sashikant Kotwal (7) drew S Arun Prasad (7); S Poobesh Anand (7) beat K V Shantharam (6); K Ratnakaran (7) beat V S Negi (6); O T anil Kumar (7) beat S R Mishra (6); G Balaji (7) beat Vipul Subhashi (6); Joydev Saha (6) lost to Manish Kumar (7); Saheli Barua (6) lost to Saurabh Kherdekar (7); M Kunal (6) lost to Ravi Kumar (7); Amit Pal Singh (7) beat Biswajeet Chatterjee (6); Mobin Farooqui (6) lost to Ketan Borich (7).