Das makes GM norm; title for Popov

International Master Sayantan Das defeated Vitaliy Bernadskiy of Ukraine to make a Grandmaster norm in 10th and final round of the 14th Parsvnath Delhi International Chess Festival that concluded on Saturday.

It was intense drama in the final round of Rs12.5 lakh tournament as overnight sole leader Ivan Popov suffered a shock defeat at the hands of veteran GM Valeriy Neverov of Ukraine.

While it did not alter the final rankings, it made for a thrilling day as Neverov won with white pieces. At the end it was a three-way tie for the top spot on eight points each with Hungarian GM Attila Czebe.

Popov still had the best tiebreak and the Russian walked away with the winner’s cheque of Rs300,000. Czebe finished second and Neverov had to be content with a third place finish.

Among the Indians, M.R. Lalith Babu scored a fine victory over Yuri Solodovnic-henko of Ukraine to tie for the fourth spot and sixth overall. Also ending in this set of 7.5 points were Das and Vaibhav Suri, who finished seventh and ninth respectively.

The day however belonged to Sayantan who made a GM norm with a commendable show. Bernadskiy was outdone in the middle game where he lost a couple of pawns without much compensation and slowly but surely Sayantan converted the advantage.

Das thus added a fifth norm to the tournament after R.A. Pradeep Kumar, Himal Gusain and Mehar Chinna Reddy made International Master norms while Srija Sheshadri got her Women International Master norm.

In category C that also concluded here simultaneously, N. Srihari emerged victories with a whopping 9.5 points out of a possible 10. Srihari won Rs150,000 for his efforts.

In a three-way tie for the second spot on nine points, Ashutosh Bannerjee finished second, Shanya Mishra was declared third while Manish Kumar Sharma finished fourth. The category had a prize fund of Rs11,00,000.