Doha, Dec 3: Grandmaster B Adhiban scored his fifth victory on the trot, beating Ukraine’s Yuriy Kuzubov, to grab the joint fifth spot after the seventh round of the Qatar Masters International Open Chess tournament here Wednesday. However, Orissa’s Debashis Das slumped to defeat against Ivan Salgado Lopez of Spain.
Starting with losses in the first two rounds of the tournament, Adhiban has slowly emerged as the dark horse of the event. He scripted a fine attacking victory against Kuzubov with black pieces. For the records it was a King’s Indian defense wherein the Indian checkmated his higher-ranked opponent.
Vladimir Kramnik proved his true mettle when it mattered the most and scored a crushing victory against tournament leader Anish Giri. The Semi Slav by Giri met with the Fianchetto system and Kramnik was at his technical best in a must-win situation.
This result threw the tournament open again as Kramnik and Giri emerged as joint leaders on six points apiece and these two are now followed by AR Salem Saleh and Yu Yangyi of China who both have 5.5 points in their kitty. With just two rounds to come, Adhiban shares the fifth spot along with 13 others.
In other important games involving Indians, P Harikrishna was held to a draw by Daniil Dubov of Russia while Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta played out another draw with a top-50 member, holding Ding Liren of China.
Playing black again, Gupta faced one of the topical variations and Liren had to spend quite some time to come up with a plan in the opening.