Visakh, Vishnu Prasanna among leaders in Chennai Open chess

India's Grand Masters N R Visakh and V Vishnu Prasanna are among leers with six points after seven rounds in 12th Chennai Open International GM Chess tournament 2020 on Wednesday. two Chennai GMs share le with top-seeded Pavel Ponkratov (Russia), Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (Peru), Sergei Yudin (Russia), Stanislav Bogdavich (Ukraine) and Aleksey Gogav (Russia). Half a point behind leers at 5.5 points were 13 players including Indian stars Neelotpal Das, M R Venkatesh, P D S Girinath, Mitrabha Guha, Jubin Jimmy and Chennai schoolboy G B Harshavardhan. Harshavardhan bounced back from defeat to Yudin in sixth round, by holding GM Vasquez Schroeder Rodrigo (Chile) to a draw. With 5.5 points in his kitty, Harsha is on track for his third International Master rm.

Important results:

Round 7 (Indians unless specified): Pavel Ponkratov (Russia) 6 drew with Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (Peru) 6, N R Visakh (6) drew with Sergei Yudin (Russia) 6, Aleksej Aleksandrov (Belarus) 5.5 drew with Taher Yoseph olifus (Indonesia) 5.5, Aleksey Gogav (Russia) 6 beat Anup Deshmukh (5). Stanislav Bogdavich (Ukraine) 6 beat itya Samant (5), G B Harshavardhan (5.5) drew with Vasquez Schroeder Rodrigo (Chile) 5.5, M Kunal 5) lost to V Vishnu Prasanna (6), V Pranav (5) lost to Mikheil Mchedlishvili (Georgia) 5.5, Ivan Rozum (Rus) 5.5 beat Mikulas Manik (Slovakia) 4.5, Alberto David (Italy) 4.5 lost to Denis Eraschenkov (Russia) 5.5.

Round 6: Martinez Alcantara 5.5 drew with Visakh (5.5), Sergei Yudin 5.5 beat Harshavardhan (5), Neelotpal Das (4.5) lost to Ponkratov 5.5, Taher Yoseph olifus 5 drew with Pranav (5), Bharath Subramaniyam H (4) lost to Aleksandrov 5; Ravichandran Siddharth (4) lost to Aleksey Gogav 5, Bogdavich 5 beat Ameir Moheb (Egypt) 4, Pranesh M (4.5) drew with Alberto David 4.5, Alexei Fedorov (Belarus) 4.5 drew with S Nitin (4.5), L R Srihari (4.5) drew with Kirill Stupak (Blr) 4.5.