14-year-old FIDE Master V R Aravindh Chithambaram (7.5) earned his maiden nine game GM norm defeating fellow Indian Grandmaster M R Lalith Babu in the ninth round of the Chennai Grandmaster International Open Chess tournament held in celebration of the FIDE World Championship Match 2013 at Nehru Stadium, Chennai here today.
Thus far, Aravindh Chithambaram has won the National titles in Under 11, 13 & 19 categories. He had won the Under-14 Open category silver medal at World Youth Chess Championship at Maribor, Slovenia last year, after tying for the top spot with Kayden Troff of USA. His ELO 2726 performance rating here shows the native talent and potential that is bound to take him far.
Sharing the lead at 7.5 points with Aravindh Chithambaram were GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (India) and IM Mikhail Mozharov (Russia) respectively.
Grandmaster Vidit Santosh Gujrathi
In addition, the day saw a host of 9-game norms being made. Aravindh Chithambaram (India) and Mikhail Mozharov (Russia) made their GM Norms, while IM Norms were achieved by T U Navin Kanna and N R Vignesh (both India) respectively. Chennai girl G K Monnisha made her WIM Norm making it a high five for the event.
Top round 9 results:
IM Mozharov Mikhail RUS 2508 – GM Vishnu Prasanna. V IND 2505 ½ – ½
IM Swayams Mishra IND 2435 – GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi IND 2582 0 – 1
GM Lalith Babu M.R. IND 2570 – FM Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. IND 2335 0 – 1
GM Popov Ivan RUS 2652 – GM Papin Vasily RUS 2510 ½ – ½
GM Neverov Valeriy UKR 2508 – GM Ter-Sahakyan Samvel ARM 2568 1 – 0
GM Borovikov Vladislav UKR 2558 – IM Ravichandran Siddharth IND 2372 ½ – ½
GM Laxman R.R. IND 2428 – GM Sethuraman S.P. IND 2553 0 – 1
Navin Kanna T.U. IND 2348 – GM Shyam Sundar M. IND 2544 0 – 1
GM Mirzoev Azer AZE 2519 – FM Petrosyan Tigran S. ARM 2389 ½ – ½
GM Babujian Levon ARM 2510 – IM Rathnakaran K. IND 2434 1 – 0
The playing format of the tournament is 11-round Swiss and the total prize fund is 16,000 USD.
R R Vasudevan
Press Officer