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IM Akshay Borgaonkar, the 17-year-old from Pune, pulled off his second major upset win, this time over GM Luka Paichadze in the fourth round, to stamp his mark in the Masters Category of the 360 ONE Global Chess Festival, being played  at the World Trade centre.

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Top seed Iniyan Pa continued to impress as he grinded Boris Savchenko in a dead draw position to maintain his sole lead with 4 points as major and minor upsets rocked the sessions in all the three Categories.

Trailing half a point behind Iniyan are IM Ayush Sharma and IM Soham Kamotra, while Borgaonkar, Apoorva Kamble, Aakash Sharadchandra Dalvi, Alexander Slizhevsky and Nitin Belurkar are bunched behind with 3 points each. Kamotra defeated higher rated compatriot Audi Ameya while Aysush defeated Jval Saurin Patel. GM Abhijeet Gupta survived several anxious moments before salvaging a draw against GM Alexei Federov.

WIM Oshini Gunawarddhana Devindya defeated higher rated IM Nikhil Dikshit while GM Sankalp Gupta had to stay content with a draw against David Gochelashvili.

In the Challenger Category, top seed Madhvendra Pratap Sharma was held to a draw by Vivaan Sardana which allowed Viresh Sharnarthi, Vedant Nagarkatte, Shlok Sharnarthi and Abhishek T N To jointly lead this section with a perfect score of 4 points. Madhvendra along with 18 others is trailing half a point behind the leaders.

Ankit Das, Madhvendra Pratap Sharma and Nijesh R have all scored four successive victories to tally 4 points each and jointly lead the junior Category.

Iniyan displayed tremendous tenacity and grit, refusing to settle for a draw against Savchenko even as the position dictated one after employing the Sicilian defence. The middle-game had some tense moments as Iniyan landed into a cramped position with Savchenko’s queen and rook infiltrating deep into his territory to pose problems. The complicated position had Savchenko consuming more time and later having too little left as Iniyan craftily make some tricky moves to get out of the passive position. Iniyan by then was ahead by more than an hour on the clock and with his queen zig-zagging across the board, Savchenko fell into a checkmating net set up by Iniyan’s queen and knight after 69 moves.

Luka Paichadze opted for the French Defence against Akshay Borgaonkar and his Queen was in enemy territory by the 19th turn indicating his aggressive approach. How-ever the inability of Luka’s other pieces to co-ordinate with the queen had the attack fizzling out. Luka’s position collapsed after a wrong knight move on the 23rd turn and it was Borgaonkar who was on the attacking side. Luka had by then lost plenty of pawns and when further faced with the loss of another piece, gave up the battle on the 38th move.

Vivaan Sardana employed the Caro-Kann defence against higher ranked Madhvendra and this game hardly had any interesting moments as Black initiated the exchange of pieces at every possible opportunity. Peace was signed on the 54th moves when the last men standing on board were just the two kings. This is a good result for Vivaan.

The game between Madhvendra and Aradhy Garg in the Queen’s Gambit saw a flurry of exchanges to transpose into a rook and pawn ending with identical pawns by the 28th turn. On the 32nd turn Aradhy decided against capturing a pawn, a decision which appeared dubious. There on Aradhya waged a lost battle before resigning on the 70th turn. Janaki S D Accounted for higher rated Ankit Das on the second board.

Results

Gunawardhana, Devindya Oshini (1) beat Dixit, Nikhil (0)

Savchenko, Boris (0) lost to Iniyan, Pa (1)

Ayush, Sharma (1) beat Jval, Saurin Patel (0)

Soham, Kamotra (1) beat Audi, Ameya (0)

Slizhevsky, Alexander (1/2) draw Aakash Sharadchandra, Dalvi (1/2)

Fedorov, Alexei (1/2) draw Gupta, Abhijeet (1/2)

Ajay, Santhosh Parvathareddy (1/2) draw Harsh, Suresh (1/2)

Borgaonkar, Akshay (1) beat Paichadze, Luka (0)

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