Top seed Hikaru Nakamura (2798) drew with the white pieces against Shankland (2661) in round 6 and continues to lead the strong US Chess Championship 2015.
Title-hopeful Wesley So (2788) suffered yet another loss, this time at the hands of Ray Robson (2656).
In the women’s section, Katerina Nemcova continues her dream run with 5/6 points!
Mariya Muzychuk of Ukraine beat Pogonina of Russia with White pieces, in their second game match to take lead. 2 more games follow in the 4 game match.
Muzychuk (2526) of Ukraine held Pogonina (2456) to a draw with the Black pieces in their first game of the 4 game match to decide the Women’s world chess champion.
Three Indian players are competing at the O2C Doeberl Cup Premier, 2015. GMs Surya Shekhar Ganguly, R.B. Ramesh and WGM AarthieRamaswamy had a sedate start to the event by drawing their first round games and winning the second.
The top-seed GM Loek van Wely had a rough first day where he lost to Australian IM Gary Lane (Elo. 2350).
In a notable coincidence, the husband-wife pair of Gm R.B. Ramesh and WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy found themselves facing each other in the very first round. Though the game eventually did end in a draw, it was by no means a pre-arranged result as WGM Ramaswamy went all out with a classical bishop sacrifice.
Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran lost to co-leader Russian GM Daniil Dubov to lose the lead at the Aeroflot Open, 2015. Playing the black side of a Ruy Lopez, Sasikiran was holding tight in a rook endgame until an unfortunate slip cost him the game.
Reaching the time-control, white had just played 40.Ra3 with the point that 40…Rxc2? 41.Rc3 Rxg2 42.Rg3+ and the b pawn queens. Hence, black should have played something like 40…Kf6! where he holds. Instead, Sasi went captured on c2 and ended up losing after 40…Rxc2 41.Rc3 Rd2 when the b-pawn is simply too fast.
Dubov shares lead with Nepomniachtchi
Sasi’s slip proved costly for him, enabling GM Dubov to share the lead with GM Nepomniachtchi who won his game.
Meanwhile, GM Adhiban registered a very important victory with the black pieces agains GM Korobov of Ukraine where he nursed his advantage to a winning rook endgame. This win took his tally to a commendable 4.5/6 in the super-strong field.
The other Indians in the fray had a bad day with GM Sethuraman, GM Vishnu Prasanna and IM Swayams Mishra drawing their games. GM Ankit Rajpara had to face defeat despite playing the white pieces while GM Gujrathi lost defending with black pieces. GM Sandipan Chanda too slipped to suffer another loss.
Grzegorz Gajewski won the LOTTO Polish Chess Championship with 6.5/9 points on account of his superior Tie break. Gajewski was the Second of India’s Viswanathan Anand in the 2014 World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen.
Gajewski wins, Klekowski draws
Entering into the final round, Untitled Maciej Klekowski (2434) was in sole lead with 6/9 points. Gajewski managed to defeat Michal Olszewski (2567) when the latter blundered in a good position. Meanwhile Klekowski could only salvage a draw against GM Duda 2597.
The US Chess championship 2015 is taking place from April 1st to April 12th in St Louis, MO. Both the Open and Women’s sections will be played in 11 round robin format.
PLAYERS (open) ELØ 2644
Hikaru Nakamura
2798
Wesley So
2788
Gata Kamsky
2680
Alex Onischuk
2665
Sam Shankland
2661
Ray Robson
2656
Daniel Naroditsky
2640
Var Akobian
2622
Timur Gareev
2599
Sam Sevian
2548
Kayden Troff
2544
Conrad Holt
2525
PLAYERS (women) ELØ 2238
GM Irina Krush
2477
IM Nazi Paikidze
2333
WGM Tatev Abrahamyan
2322
IM Rusudan Goletiani
2311
WGM Katerina Nemcova
2279
WGM Anna Sharevich
2267
FM Alisa Melekhina
2235
WGM Sabina Foisor
2235
WIM Viktorija Ni
2188
WFM Jennifer Yu
2180
NM Apurva Virkud
2132
WIM Annie Wang
1901
SCHEDULE (Same for both)
Round 1
1-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 2
2-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 3
3-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 4
4-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 5
5-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Rest Day
6-Apr-2015
Round 6
7-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 7
8-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 8
9-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 9
10-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 10
11-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Round 11
12-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
Playoff (if necessary)
13-Apr-2015
13:00 CDT
18:00 GMT
23:30 IST
The games will be broadcast live on Follow Chess app. Special thanks to Lennart Ootes.