IMs Dhopade, Nitin score shock wins

Swapnil <g data-gr-id="25">Dhopade</g> and Nitin S, both International Masters, recorded upset wins against GMs Aleksandrov Aleksej of Belarus and Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh respectively in the 8th round of the BMC-LIC sponsored 8th Mumbai Mayor’s International Chess Tournament here on Sunday.

Aleksej overestimated his chances and made a crucial mistake to hand over the full point to his Indian rival <g data-gr-id="20">Dhopade</g>. The trend of GMs losing to an IMs continued as Rahman went down to another Indian, Nitin.

Both Dhopade and Nitin are in joint second place with seven other players in the tournament which is being held at the suburban Goregaon Sports Club. Jointly occupying the second spot were Alexander Zubov Alexander, Dmitry Kokarev Pavel Smirnov, Luka Paichadze, Mikheil Mchedlishvili, Nguyen Duc, Swapnil <g data-gr-id="24">Dhopade</g>, S Nitin and Harsha Bharathakoti.

Meanwhile, leading Indian title contenders, GM <g data-gr-id="18">R R</g> Laxman and IM Priyadarshan, along with GM Kravstiv Martyn of Ukraine, continued to share the lead with 6.5 points each with two rounds remaining. 

The match between the two overnight leaders, Laxman and Martyn turned out to be a tame affair as the duo decided to draw their encounter in just 14-moves from the Catalan opening and they now wait for the right opponents in the next two rounds.

An interesting battle ensued on board two in the game between GM Alexander Zubov and joint overnight leader Priyadarshan, who is rated 150 points below his rival on the ELO ratings.