Ganguly, Gokhale leap into joint lead

National champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly and International Master Chandra Shekhar Gokhale turned tables on their rivals to catapult India in the lead after the tenth and penultimate round of the second Parsvanath International Chess Tournament in Delhi on Wednesday.

Grandmaster Ganguly outwitted defending champion GM R B Ramesh and Gokhale defeated GM Safin Sukhrat of Kazakhstan to garner full points needed to join overnight leaders -- Pavel Kotsur of Kazakhstan, Saidali Iuldachev of Uzbekistan and Serik Temirbaev of Kazakhstan at eight points apiece.

Kotsur drew with GM Koneru Humpy in 11 moves to maintain his joint lead while Tameibaev and Iuldachev also agreed to sign the peace treaty.

Humpy, along with GM Dibyendu Barua, IM Sriram Jha, GM Sandipan Chanda, GM Georgy Timoshenko of Ukraine, R R Laxman and M R Venkatesh was half a point behind at second position in the Rs 400,000 prize money competition.

Leaders Kotsur-Gokhale, Ganguly-Temirbaev and Iuldachev-Barua will sit across the board in the final round tomorrow.

Ganguly, with black, employed his pet Archangelsk defence variation against Ramesh and was in better position after sacrificing knight and a rook-bishop exchange.

The Kolkata player, who has won thrice against Ramesh playing with the same variation, complicated the middle game and weakend Ramesh in the endgame by threatening a check-mate.

Ramesh surrendered on the 53rd move.

IM Gokhale was the lucky one today as his opponent, GM Sukhrat, turned down the draw offered by the Indian and ended up losing the game. Gokhale, black, employed the Queen's Gambit defence.

Behind the leaders on second place, Barua drew his game against Jha to continue as joint second while Chanda defeated National 'B' champion Suvrajit Saha in 53 moves to join him.

Also in second place is R R Laxman, who completed his IM norm during the tournament. He shocked IM D V Prasad by complicating the game and cashing on his opponent's weak pawn position. Laxman, beginning with equal chances on employing Sicilian defence, attacked and exchanged pieces and achieved the forced win in 54 moves.

R Balasubramanium lost to GM Timoshenko and missed on his second IM norm and also slipped to joint third with Ramesh, IM Tejas Bakre, Manthan Chokshi, IM S Satyapragyan and 14 others.

Woman Grandmaster Arthie Ramaswamy drew Delhi's Gurpreet Pal Singh. Aarthie was better placed in the beginning but due to miscalculation, she allowed exchange of rook instead of maintaining the rook and reached the king-pawn ending which eventually led to a draw.