Sports News | Biel Chess Festival: Sarin Holds Gelfand to Draw

Biel (Switzerland), Jul 28 (PTI) Indian Grandmaster Nihal Sarin held veteran GM Boris Gelfand to a draw in the second round of the classical section of the Biel International Chess Festival, here on Wednesday.

Sarin recovered after losing a seven-hour marathon to No.1 seed Kiril Alekseenko (Russia) late on Tuesday to hold Gelfand in 33 moves.

He had in fact beaten Alekseenko in the Rapid event.

The young Indian GM now has 11.5 points after two rounds of Classical and the Rapid in the eight-player field.

The 17-year old Sarin (Elo rating 2620) had finished second in the rapid section with 10 points out of a possible 14 from seven rounds.

Veteran American GM Gata Kamsky is in the lead with 16.5 points so far after the rapid event and two rounds of Classical.

The eight players will also take part in the Blitz event to be held on July 31.

Meanwhile in the 73-player Master Tournament being held as part of the Biel Chess Festival, five Indians - Aravindh Chithambaram, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S L Narayanan, Abhimanyu Puranik, all GMs and WGM R Vaishali - are in joint lead with two points after two rounds.

A group of other Indian players including young GM R Praggnanandhaa and Karthikeyan Murali are joint second with 1.5 points.

Chithambaram followed up his first round win over WGM Dinara Dordzhieva with a win over fellow Indian GM Raunak Sadhwani on Wednesday. Praggnanandhaa was held to a draw by Indian International Master Kalyan Arjun in round two after beating Peter Wacker (Germany) in the first round.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)