Humpy draws with Gharmian; shares the lead

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Differdange ( Luxembourg) July 14: Indian Grandmaster Koneru Humpy drew her third game on the trot but remained in title hunt after sharing a six-way lead at the end of the penultimate round of the Kaupthing Chess Championship being played here.

Humpy played a cautious game against French Grandmaster Tigran Gharmian and both players decided to split points in the yesterday's game.

The Andhra girl aggregates six points after eight rounds and she and other co-leaders have just half a point edge over nine players.

In the game played on Ruy Lopez lines, Humpy, wary of her disadvantageous black pieces, preferred to wait and watch as both players didn't exchanged even a single piece until the 15th move.

The Frenchman offered a draw but Humpy had other ideas. She tried a new line of attack but her opponent exchanged his bishop and Humpy tried to shift her king, the game lost all chances for a positive decision and the duo signed the truce.

Humpy takes on German Grandmaster Sebestian Siebrecht in the final round game tomorrow.

The game on the second top table between co-leaders Petr Velicka and young Hungarian Grandmaster Viktor Erdos also ended in a draw.

On the seventh table, Belgian Grandmaster Vadim Malakhatko crushed India's Rohit G to stake a claim in the first six.

Malakhatko opened with e4 and Rohit replied with Nf6 and the game was than played on the English opening lines.

Right from the beginning, Malakhatko played aggressively and did not give any chance to Rohit even to structure his pieces in the proper manner. Hard on time, the Indian kept committing mistakes ultimately losing the game in 40 moves.

The last round is now wide open and Humpy will have to win the game to lift the trophy. She, however, leads the race for Best Women Chess Player's prize of 1500 euros followed by former world women chess champion Antoaneta Stefanova who is half a point behind her.

UNI




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