Adhiban loses to Ni Hua

Grandmaster B Adhiban ran out of steam and went down to Ni Hua of China in the seventh round of Asian continental chess championship to slip to joint fifth position in rankings from the pole position here today.
Having done quite well so far, Adhiban was out-of-sort against former Asian champion Ni Hua and the loss proved costly.
Former world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan and Chinese trio of Ni Hua, Bu Xiangzhi and Yu Yangyi emerged as joint leaders on 5.5 points in the championship, which is a part of the next world championship cycle.
Despite the loss, Adhiban remains the best performing Indian on five points and shares the fourth spot with Ehsam Ghaem Maghami of Iran and Rinat Jumabayem of Kazakhstan.

The Indian will, however, have to win one of the last two games to be in with a chance to qualify for the world chess cup.
With just two rounds to go, Parimarjan Negi, Abhijeet Gupta, Deep Sengupta and S P Sethuraman are the other Indians still in contention on 4.5 points each and sharing the eighth spot. The top five from the championship will qualify to the world cup to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2015.

The seventh round was generally tough for the Indians as Krishnan Sasikiran lost to Xiangzhi, while Negi had to sign peace with A R Salem Saleh of UAE.

Abhijeet and Deep provided the silver lining on the dull day by coming back in to reckoning defeating Chinese Wang Yungup and Jahongir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan respectively. S P Sethuraman played out a draw with Wen Yang of China.
In the women's championship being organised simultaneously, International Master Tania Sachdev almost bowed out of contention for a podium finish following a draw with Hoang Thi Nhu Y of Vietnam.