Prasanna makes GM norm, Sahaj Grover wins under-16 title

Chalkida: V Vishnu Prasanna made his maiden Grandmaster norm defeating Grandmaster Mahjoob Morteza of Iran in the ninth and final round of the Negroponte International open chess tournament that concluded here. Prasanna who had a brilliant 5/6 start had lost the last two rounds but the high average rating of his opponents meant that he could still make the norm if he won in the last round and the Indian did just that after a marathon battle. Interestingly, Prasanna is not an International Master yet, but his performance in the last two tournaments should be enough to get him the IM title. For the GM title, he will need two more norms. The other good news was the near sweep in the under-16 category where International Master Sahaj Grover top scored with six points and his tiebreak score was superior than compatriot IM-in-waiting Vaibhav Suri. Both Grover and Suri won their last round game against lower ranked opponents. Meanwhile, Suat Atalik of Turkey came up with a brilliant performance in the last round too as he defeated top seed Denis Khismatullin of Russia to take the title on eight points out of a possible nine. Robert Hess of United States finished second on 7.5 points while after a last round draw with Iranian Ghaem Maghami Ehsan, Surya Shekhar Ganguly emerged as the top performing Indian on 6.5 points. For the records, Ganguly finished with a tie for the eighth spot and finished 12th overall. The last round again had mixed results for the Indians as Sandipan Chanda went down fighting against Iranian Grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi. In a King`s Indian defense as white, Sandipan enjoyed the opening and middlegame advantage but an erroneous plan led to a lost endgame. Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta played out a draw with Athanasios Mastrovasilis of Greece to finish with an overall tally of six points. After winning the Kavala open jointly just few days back, this was a slight setback for Abhijeet who is currently short of a few elo rating points to scale the 2600 ELO rating barrier. In the women`s section Ekaternia Atalik, wife of Suat, made it a grand double for the Ataliks by winning the last round game against GM David Alberto of Luxembourg. Ekaterina won the women`s title solely on 6.5 points while D Harika, Tania Sachdev and Soumya Swaminathan all scored 5.5 points each. The hero of the day was certainly Vishnu Prasanna who had to win with white against Morteza. The Indian increased the pressure in the middle game and won a pawn but the ensuing endgame was far from easy with the presence of Bishops of opposite colours. However, Prasanna tried relentlessly and was rewarded in the end for his perseverance as Morteza was caught unawares in a tactical trick. "He probably had some chances for a draw, but we were both short of time and he made the mistake", Prasanna said after the game. PTI