Contrasting day for Bhakti, Samant

Pune: Bhakti Kulkarni won a game and drew another in the Maharashtra Open Chess tournament at Balewadi sports complex on Friday.
Bhakti, 30, who is a part of India’s Women’s ‘A’ team in the Olympiad, beat Ortik Nigmatov of Uzbekistan in the fifth round and drew with Aditya Mittal in the sixth.
The International Master (IM) from Goa tallied 4.5 points and is joint second with five more rounds to go.
Pune’s IM Soumya Swaminathan, who will be a part of India’s Olympiad ‘B’ team, withdrew after four rounds on Thursday as she failed to win a single game and logged one point. Bhakti enjoyed some luck as she had white pieces twice on the day. Nigmatov failed to see a strong continuation in the middle game which would have seen him go a piece up. Instead, he was grinded to defeat after 96 moves in a rook and opposite-coloured bishops endgame with the Indian having two extra pawns.
Aditya Samant of Pune, who was playing on the second board in the fifth round on Friday, was demoted to the 20th board in Saturday’s seventh round pairing against Snehal Bhosale after he lost his two games: first against Deep Sengupta with black pieces and then to Kaustav Kunde with white. “I had defensive resources in both games but failed to find them,” said 15-year-old Aditya, who had defeated former Women’s knockout World champion Antonaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria in a classical game in Spain last December.
Samant’s Elo strength of 2433 is that of an IM but he has not got the title due to some technical glitch. “The aim is to become a GM as soon as possible,” he said.
Luka Paichadze of Georgia lost his overnight sole leadership after a grulleing day of two rounds. There are seven joint-leaders now, including Paichadze, having five points each. GM Arjun Kalyan and IM LR Srihari of India are in this group. Arjun defeated Anup Deshmukh and drew with Paichadze. Srihari beat Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus and drew with Sengupta. Top seed Farrukh Amonatov of Tejikistan regained the leadership status as he defeated Bangladesh GM Enamul Hossain and Indian IM Neelash Saha.
Anand beats Hao in Armgaddon; Carlsen wins
Stavanger (Norway): V Anand continued his winning run in the Norway chess tournament here as he defeated China’s Wang Hao in the Armageddon of the third round to remain on top of the standings. The 52-year-old Anand won sudden death game after his classical game was drawn after 39 moves. Carlsen bounced back to win against Teimour Radjabov after having lost in the second round to So via the Armageddon. pti