Gibraltar:
Grandmaster Debashis Das came up with his best performance ever to hold former world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria to a creditable draw in the second round of the Masters’ section of Tradewise Gibraltar Chess festival, on Thursday.
On a day of upsets, Indian Grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna defeated highly regarded Grandmaster Emil Sutovsky of Israel while former world junior girl’s champion Soumya Swaminathan came with an inspired performance to beat American Kayden Troff to maintain a clean slate after two games.
Also ending on a high was Indian GM M R Venkatesh who scored a fine victory over Simen Agdestein of Norway.
With eight rounds still to come, it was business as usual for some of the higher-ranked players but highest rated Indian P Harikrishna had to show his endgame-magic before he could secure his second victory in the tournament.
Quinten Ducarmon of Holland had an extra pawn in the endgame arising out of a French defense but Harikrishna used his Bishop pair well to catch the Dutchman off-guard and won in 52 moves.
The day however belonged to Debashis Das. It was a Nimzo Indian Classical in which Topalov tried a lot of tricks in the middle game. Starting with a piece sacrifice on the 25th move the Bulgarian ripped apart white’s position on the king side but Das came up with some remarkable counter play to keep himself in the game.
The Indian was undeterred by the close to 300 rating points different between the two and even allowed Topalov to make a second queen when the position reached an exciting finish. When the dust subsided Topalov had an extra queen but Das had three pieces. The draw was signed on move 46.
