08 September,2009 12:10 PM IST | | IANS
Vietnamese Grandmaster Li Quang Liem snatched the leader's tag from Indian GM Sandipan Chanda after the seventh round at the Kolkata Open Grandmaster Chess tournament on Monday.
The in-form Liem accounted for local Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly from an inferior position to take his points tally to 6 in the fourth edition of the tournament.
Chanda, Czech Republic's Viktor Laznica and Uzbekistan GM Anton Filippov, who stunned SuperGM Briton Nigel Short, share the second spot with 5.5 points each at the Gorky Sadan.
The Vietnamese employed the Caro-Kann defence as Ganguly switched to an offensive mode from the beginning and slowly built a position of strength. The Indian, however, got into acute time trouble and blundered away a couple of pawns after which it was all over.
Chanda and Laznicka, who faced off on the top board, could not break the deadlock even though the local boy defended an inferior position throughout the game.
Filippov shocked Short from the black side of a Giuoco Piano opening. The Englishman tried the sharp Evans gambit and the Uzbek player gobbled up the pawn and defended coolly. Short then gave up a couple of more pawns on the queenside to prepare for an all out attack on the king, but failed to penetrate his opponent's defenses and eventually resigned.
Top seeded Grandmaster Shakriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan played an aggressive game to come back into the reckoning for a top spot. He defeated Indian GM Magesh Chandran from the white side of a Reti opening, in the exciting game.
A few other Super Grandmasters also made a bid for a strong finish. Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus, Mikheil Mchedlishvili of Georgia, India's Parimarjan Negi, Israeli Evgeny Postny and Rauf mamedov of Azerbaijan are all on 5 points.
IM RRLaxman moved closer to his third and final GM norm as he won against GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh in a long endgam.
IM's B Adhiban and S Satyapragyan are similarly well placed for their GM norms.
