Lakecity GM R01 to 03: Bihar talent Kumar Gaurav stuns Grandmaster Laxman Rajaram
The princely city of Udaipur in Rajasthan is witnessing the 1st Lakecity International Grandmaster Open which is taking place from 13th to the 20th of September 2019. A total of 223 players from 11 different countries have come to participate including 13 GMs and 9 IMs. The Russian Grandmaster Ivan Rozum is the top seed of the tournament with a rating of 2596; while the Indian contingent, consisting of 186 participants in all, is led by the country's 13th GM and the event's second seed Deepan Chakkravarthy. Three rounds have been completed so far, in this consolidated report we bring you the jist of the most important moments from the same.
The Chess in Lakecity - Udaipur Chess club is also organizing rapid and blitz tournaments alongside the classical GM open. The total prize fund of this grand chess gala is 20 Lakh Indian Rupees. The GM open is a ten-round swiss event being played from the 13th to 20th of September following a time control of 90 minutes for the entire game plus 30 seconds increment per move from move one.
As anticipated, most of the top players won their games pretty smoothly in the first three rounds. However, the beginning has not been altogether unsurprising. In round one Gautam Kataria (1625) unexpectedly held the strong Russian IM Denis Eraschenkov (2390) to a draw playing the black side of Caro-Kann Panov-Botvinnik variation. Similarly, round two also saw a couple of surprising results as Abhay Bandewar (1815) and 12-year-old Garv Gaur (1801) drew their substantially higher-rated opponents Siddharth Jagadeesh and IM Sidhant Mohapatra respectively. But the biggest upset was actually in store for the third round.
Laxman Rajaram has been in impressive form lately as he had won the Pearl City Hyderabad Open just before arriving at Udaipur. However, yesterday when he sat across Bihar's Gaurav Kumar, things didn't turn out well at all for him. The Indian Grandmaster had the black pieces and he went for the rather obscure 1.e4 b6 line, the so-called Owen's defense. Faced with such an unusual opening Kumar didn't lose his cool, he played on resourcefully to capitalize on the little chances he got and ultimately ended up registering a crushing victory over his superior opponent in just 31 moves.
Gaurav Kumar - Laxman Rajaram, Round 3
The full game with brief annotations is presented below:
The third round saw a few more surprising results as Grandmasters Swapnil S. Dhopade, Ziaur Rahman, Neelotpal Das, and Himanshu Sharma were held to draw by their lower rated opponents Pranav Shetty, Thanki Hemal Karsanji, Arya Bhakta, and Ashutosh Kumar respectively.
Some more photos from opening ceremony
Standings after three rounds
Rk. | SNo | Name | Typ | sex | FED | Rtg | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | TB4 | TB5 | ||
1 | 16 | GM | Manik Mikulas | SVK | 2375 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 6,0 | 6,00 | 3 | |||
2 | 5 | GM | Saptarshi Roy | IND | 2480 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 5,5 | 5,50 | 3 | |||
3 | 6 | GM | Vasquez Schroeder Rodrigo | CHI | 2476 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 5,0 | 5,00 | 3 | |||
11 | FM | Mitrabha Guha | IND | 2414 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 5,0 | 5,00 | 3 | ||||
20 | Sahoo Utkal Ranjan | IND | 2329 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 5,0 | 5,00 | 3 | |||||
6 | 13 | GM | Hesham Abdelrahman | EGY | 2396 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 4,0 | 4,0 | 4,00 | 3 | |||
7 | 2 | GM | Deepan Chakkravarthy J. | IND | 2539 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 5,0 | 5,00 | 3 | |||
22 | FM | Shailesh Dravid | IND | 2299 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 5,0 | 5,00 | 3 | ||||
9 | 1 | GM | Rozum Ivan | RUS | 2596 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 4,5 | 4,50 | 3 | |||
15 | IM | Vlassov Nikolai | RUS | 2384 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 4,5 | 4,50 | 3 | ||||
17 | IM | Konguvel Ponnuswamy | IND | 2374 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 4,5 | 4,50 | 3 | ||||
21 | Bharat Kumar Reddy Poluri | IND | 2304 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 4,5 | 4,50 | 3 | |||||
38 | Kumar Gaurav | IND | 2096 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 3,5 | 4,5 | 4,50 | 3 |
See detailed results here.