Visakh, Vishnu Prasanna among leaders in Chennai Open chess

India's Grand Masters N R Visakh and V Vishnu Prasanna are among the leaders with six points after seven rounds in the 12th Chennai Open International GM Chess tournament 2020 on Wednesday. The two Chennai GMs share the lead with top-seeded Pavel Ponkratov (Russia), Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (Peru), Sergei Yudin (Russia), Stanislav Bogdanovich (Ukraine) and Aleksey Goganov (Russia). Half a point behind the leaders 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 the 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 norm.

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 Theolifus (Indonesia) 5.5, Aleksey Goganov (Russia) 6 beat Anup Deshmukh (5). Stanislav Bogdanovich (Ukraine) 6 beat Aditya 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 Theolifus 5 drew with Pranav (5), Bharath Subramaniyam H (4) lost to Aleksandrov 5; Ravichandran Siddharth (4) lost to Aleksey Goganov 5, Bogdanovich 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.