Top Indians out of title race at chess meet

Three players - Andrei Deviatkin, Aleksej Aleksandrov and John Paul Gomez of the Philippines - are the joint leaders with 8.5 points each going into the last day tomorrow.

All the Indians, barring Aditya Udeshi of Mumbai, are out of the title race.

In an all-India battle, Udeshi upset higher rated Sahaj Grover and was trailing by half a point behind the leaders along with Kirill Stupak, Ziaur Rahman, Attila Czebe and Mark Paragua.

Udeshi still has an outside chance of tying for top place if he scores against Czebe in the final round.

The biggest blow for the host country was the defeat of overnight joint leader and the highest rated Indian in fray, B Adhiban, against second seeded Andrei Deviatkin of Russia.

In the Queen's Gambit game Adhiban could never really equalise against Deviatkin and, by the 20th turn, it was apparent the Indian would be facing an uphill task to save the game.

Deviatkin, reputed for his formidable ending technique like other top Russian players, gave a good example of it to win the game after 48 moves. The defeat left Adhiban on 7.5 points with five others.

Abhijit Kunte, the other Indian who was having a good time, also lost to top seed Aleksandrov of Belarus, while his compatriot Deepan Chakravarthy, too, ended on the losing side against Rahman of Bangladesh. (More)