Chennai based Grandmaster R R Laxman stunned the top seed GM Ivan Popov of Russia in the second round of the Chennai Grand Master International Open Chess tournament held in celebration of the FIDE World Championship Match 2013 at Multipurpose Indoor Stadium, here today.
Sharing the lead at 2.0 points with Laxman were GMs Lalith Babu, Vidit Gujrathi, Vishnu Prasanna (all India), Ter Sahakyan Samvel, Babujian Levon (both Armenia), Drazic Sinisa (Serbia) among others.
Top round 2 results:
GM Laxman R.R. 2428 – GM Popov Ivan 2652 1 – 0
GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi 2582 – IM Baghdasaryan Vahe 2393 1 – 0
WGM Batsiashvili Nino 2425 – GM Lalith Babu M.R. 2570 0 – 1
GM Ter-Sahakyan Samvel 2568 – IM Karthikeyan P. 2368 1 – 0
IM Shivananda B.S. 2342 – GM Shyam Sundar M. 2544 1 – 0
GM Babujian Levon 2510 – IM Himanshu Sharma 2359 1 – 0
IM Murali Krishnan B.T. 2312 – GM Papin Vasily 2510 ½ – ½
WGM Ambartsumova Karina 2310 – GM Neverov Valeriy 2508 ½ – ½
The playing format of the tournament is 11-round Swiss and the total prize fund is 16,000 USD.
Organizing committee members of FWCM 2013 viz., S Balaraman, M Vijayakumar, R K Balagunasekaran, M Ephrame, M Senthilvel (makes the symbolic first move) and S Paul Arokia Raj with GM Popov Ivan (Russia) facing Deshpande Aniruddha (India)
R R Vasudevan
Press Officer