Ganguly, Sandipan share first place in Fujairah chess

Grandmasters Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Sandipan Chanda settled for a quick draw and shared first place along with Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine in the Fujairah International open chess tournament that concluded in Fujaira, UAE, on Wednesday.

Having done the hard work in the previous rounds, the Kolkata-based practice partners had no reason to look for more as a tie for the first place was almost assured with the drawn result in their mutual game.

There was an added incentive for Ganguly after the ties were resolved as he had the best tie-break score among three players tied for the top slot. The Indian rose back to form in this tournament and stands to gain around 20 rating points which certainly is a huge gain at present level.

Sandipan finished third overall after a bad start and was also visibly pleased with his excellent results that included victories over the top two seeds - Baadur Jobava of Georgia and Liem Le Quang of Vietnam.

The hard work was done in the penultimate round on Tuesday night as Sandipan accounted for Quang while Ganguly crushed Mikheil Mchedlishvili of Georgia.

The two, along with Sergey Fedorchuk of Ukraine, shared the lead on six points apiece and the Ukrainian went down to Quang in the final round.

The three joint-winners scored 6.5 points in all and got a little over US $10,000 each as prize-money for their efforts.

Ganguly started the tournament with three wins and remained in joint lead throughout.

Earlier in April, Sandipan also finished joint-first in the Dubai International open and after this performance in Fujairah it looks as though UAE has become one of his favourite hunting grounds.

The other Indians did not do well. Abhijeet Gupta , the highest rated Indian in the fray, played out two draws in the last two rounds against Ivan Saric of Croatia and Zaven Andriasian of Armenia respectively to finish on 5.5 points and shared the tenth spot.

International Master Vishnu Prasanna and GM Tejas Bakre were the next best Indian performers on five points each.

Important and Indian results of the final round (Indians unless specified): Surya Shekhar Ganguly (6.5) drew with Sandipan Chanda (6.5); Liem Le Quang (Vie, 6) beat Sergey Fedorchuk (Ukr, 6); Alexander Moiseenko (Ukr, 6.5) beat Jaan Ehlvest (Usa, 5.5); Baadur Jobava (Geo, 6) beat Etienne Bacrot (Fra, 5.5); Zaven Andriasian (Arm, 5.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (5.5); Ma Qun (Chn, 6) beat Safarli Eltaj (Aze, 5); Vishnu Prasanna (5) lost to Ivan Saric (Cro, 6); Andrey Sumets (Ukr, 6) beat Solak Dragan (Tur, 5); Gadir Guseinov (Aze, 5.5) drew with Ghaem Maghami Ehsan (Iri, 5.5); Ni Hua (Chn, 4.5) drew with Tejas Bakre (4.5); Vladislav Tkachiev (Fra, 5) beat Debashis Das (4); S Satyapragyan (4) lost to Yaroslav Zherebukh (Ukr, 4); Constantin Lupulescu (Rou, 5) beat Sagar Shah (4); Ashwin Jayaram (4.5); beat Anurag Mhamal (3.5); Aditya Udeshi (3.5) lost to Handszar Odeev (Tkm, 4.5); Maksat Atabayev (Tkm, 3.5) lost to Akshat Khamparia (4); Ankit Rajpara     (4) beat Elarbi Abobker (Lba, 3): V Saravanan beat Salih Akar Ali Salih (Irq, 3); Nelson Mariano (Phi, 2.5) lost to Arjun Bharat (3.5).