Grandmaster Iniyan Pa got back to his winning ways in the 7th round, defeating Aakash Sharadchandra Dalvi for his 6th win in the Master’s Section of the 360 ONE Global Chess Festival in progress at the World Trade Centre, Mumbai.With just two rounds remaining of this Swiss League tournament, Iniyan with 6.5 points is a clear 1.5 points ahead of the five- player pack of Dalvi, Boris Savchenko, Apoorv Kamble, Harsh Suresh and Soham Kamotra.Viresh Sharnath had been going great guns in the Challenger section with six successive victories but he was held to a draw in the 7th round by Nithin Babu. He has tallied 6.5 points and has six other players following behind with 6 points each. This Category is still wide open with the players bunched so closely together.Top seed in both the Challengers and Junior Masters, Madhvendra Pratap Sharma has been bogged down by draws in the Challengers Category to trail much behind with 5 points. In the Junior Masters though, Madhvendra is the sole leader with 6.5 points while seven players trail behind with 5.5 points apiece. Madhvendra too had notched victories in the first six rounds and conceded his first draw.In other notable results in the Masters Category, the second board encounter between Harsh Suresh and Soham Komatra ended in a draw while GM Boris Savchenko defeated IM Ayush Sharma, IM Apoorv Kamble defeated GM Andrey Gorovets and GM Luka Paichadze defeated GM Alexei Federov.Teen prodigy WIM Oshini Gunawardhana Devindya of Sri Lanka, needing 1.5 points to make her WGM norm, suffered a loss against compatriot IM De Silva LMST and needed at least one victory and a draw in the remaining two rounds.Dalvi adopted the Nimzo Indian Defence against Iniyan and adopted an aggressive stance from the initial stages itself. He steamrolled his pawns on the King-side with the queen also hovering around his opponent’s King. On the 18th move Dalvi could have initiated the exchange of queens to maintain positional balance but a wrong queen check and a crafty knight sacrifice by Iniyan tilted the game in his favour.All of a sudden Iniyan’s Queen, rook , knight and bishop were gunning long range on Dalvi’s King, Exposed by the pawn advances in the opening stages of the game. Iniyan did appear to miss an easier route to victory but checkmated his opponent on the 34th turn with his queen and bishop.The English Opening game between IMs Sammed Jaykumar Shete and Nitish Belurkar had many interesting moments with Shete attacking vigorously on the King-side. Shete missed some promising continuations and Belurkar’s castled King could escape by running away to the queen-side. After 58 moves the game ended in a draw.In an irregular Opening game Sharnarthi played solidly against Nithin with the white pieces to maintain equality without taking much risk. Later after gaining advantage, Sharnarthi missed a winning opportunity in a rook and pawn ending and the game fizzled into a draw after 58 moves.KEY RESULTSIniyan, Pa (1) beat Aakash Sharadchandra, Dalvi (0)Harsh, Suresh (1/2) draw Soham, Kamotra (1/2)Savchenko, Boris (1) beat Ayush, Sharma (0)Nitish, Belurkar (1/2) draw Sammed Jaykumar, Shete (1/2)Apoorv, Kamble (1) beat Gorovets, Andrey (0)Paichadze, Luka (1) beat Fedorov, Alexei (0)Gupta, Abhijeet (1/2) draw Jain, Kashish Manoj (1/2).
