Pune: Top seed Farrukh Amonatov won the first Maharashtra International Open Grandmaster Chess tournament which concluded at the Balewadi Sports Complex here on Wednesday evening.
In the final 11th round things got interesting after Indian GM Arjun Kalyan defeated fourth seed Alexei Federov in a volatile game to tie for top place with Amonatov and Aleksej Aleksander after all three tallied 8.5 points each. After the tie-breaks Amanotov pipped others to emerge as the winner while Aleksej secured second place. Arjun had to stay content with a third place but should be happy with this fantastic performance.
The top board encounter between Amonatov and Alekssej was a short draw lasting a mere 14 moves in a Ruy-Lopez Opening. The players just repeated moves with their queens to quickly shake hands, having done all the hard work early in the tournament.
Deep Sengupta too had been in sparkling form and shrugged off Tuesday’s heart-breaking loss to defeat Anuj Shrivatri to finish fourth. In fact, there was a four-way tie for the fourth to seventh place between Deep, Luka, Srihari L R and Kiriil Stupak and they finished in the respective order after the application of tie-break systems.
Srihari too had a wonderful tournament and played above his rating strength. Talented youngster Aditya Mittal after performing creditably ended on the losing side against second seed Luka Paichadze.
Interestingly, Koustuv Kundu drew against GM Vishu Prasanna to make his IM Norm.
The winner GM Farrukh Amonatov got a trophy and Rs.3 lakh; while the runner-up GM Aleksandrov Aleksej got a trophy and Rs. 2 lakh The Prizes were given away at the hands of Dr. Sanjay Kapoor, President of the All-India Chess Federation (AICF), Dr. Parinay Fuke, President of Maharashtra chess Association (MCA), Mr. Siddharth Mayur, MCA Working President, Grandmaster Abhiit Kunte, Senior VP, Aniruddha Deshpande, MCA VP, Girish Chitale, MCA VP, Mr. Niranjan Godbole, Hon Secretary of MCA, Mr. Vinaya Vele, Mr. Ashwin Trimal, President of PDCC, Cheif Arbiter Alokyaraj Paul were present on the occasion.
Results Round 11: GM Farrukh Amonatov (8.5) drew with; GM Alek sej Aleksandrov (8.5); GM Alexei Federov (7) lost to GM Arjun Kalyan (8.5); IM Aditya Mittal (7) lost to Luka Paichadze(8); GM Deep Sengupta (8) bt IM Anuj Shrivatri (7); IM Neelash Saha (7.5) drew with Boris Savachenko (7.5); GM Mihail Nikitenko (7) lost to IM Srihari L R (8); GM Kiriil Stupak (8) bt CM Kushagra Mohan (7); IM Krishna Teja (7.5) bt GM MR Lalith Babu (6.5); GM Nguyen Duc Hoa (6.5) lost to GM M R Venkatesh (7.5); IM Bhakti Kulkarni (6.5) lost to GM Deepan Chakravarthy (7.5).
