Dreev wins Parsvnath chess, 3 Indians finish runners-up

New Delhi, Jan 22 (UNI) Justifying his top billing, Alexei Dreev of Russia defeated India's B Adhiban in the tenth and final round today to bag the Rs two lakh on offer in the fifth Parsvnath chess tournament here.

Dreev, who has an ELO rating of 2658, finished with 8.5 points out of a possible ten to end as the clear winner in the Swiss-league tournament.

Adhiban, however, did not let Dreev off the hook easily as held the Russian for more than three hours, lasting 57 moves when his inexperience showed as he delayed the exhange and had to resign depsite a creditable show.

Seven players came tantalisingly close to grabbing the top honours as half a point separated Dreev from them, including India's in-form G Rohit, national champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Vikramaditya Kamble and GMs Ahmed Adly of Egypt, Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh, IMs Enamul Hossain and Abdulla Al-Rakib of Bangladesh.

All these players got a little over Rs 50,000 for their efforts.

The 18-year-old Hyderabadi, Gogineni Rohit had one of his best outings to date as he completed his his third and final International Master-norm and maiden Grandmaster norm in the event.

Ahmed Adly finished the second runner up and Rahman and Ganguly were fourth and fifth respectively after the tiebreak was resolved under Bucholz system.

After Rohit, Abhijeet Gupta and S Arun Prasad, Adhiban became the other Indian to make a norm as he completed formalities of an IM norm just by appearing on board against top seed Dreev today.

Rohit continued his fine showing in the final round as he drew with Adly, who played an irregular opening and exchanged queens with the him in the 36th move.

UNI