Five-way tie at Dubai Open Chess Tournament

Top-seed Grandmaster (GM) Nihal Sarin scored an emphatic victory to bounce back into the lead after erstwhile co-leaders GM Mahammad Muradli and GM Aleksey Grebnev agreed to a quick, uneventful draw in Friday night’s fourth round of the 25th Dubai Open Chess Tournament at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club.

The three grandmasters have 3.5 points each and are joined in a five-way tie at the top by Indian players IM Rohith Krishna and GM Bharath Subramaniyam.

Sarin, who was held to a draw by Krishna in the third round, repulsed a daring attack against his king by Israel’s GM Yair Parkhov in securing the win.

The Indian top-seed maintained a solid grip of the position and was poised to win material when Parkhov launched a kingside offensive punctuated by a rook sacrifice. Sarin did not have problems diffusing the attack and converting into an endgame where he was a piece up.

The 28th-seed Krishna continued his stellar performance as he took down the ninth-seed GM Pa Iniyan, his first GM victim in the tournament, in a fashionable Queen’s Gambit opening.

Playing the black pieces, Krishna overcame a vicious attack that saw Iniyan sacrifice a pawn and then give up his rook for a knight to penetrate Krishna’s kingside defences. Krishna, however, found enough defensive resources to neutralise Iniyan’s attack and later forced an exchange of queens to convert into a winning rook-versus-knight endgame.

Subramaniyam pounced on a costly oversight by compatriot IM A R Ilamparthi to pick up the win. Ilamparthi, playing white, had built a comfortable edge in the Pelikan variation of the Sicilian Defence until an unfortunate knight retreat on the 25th move allowed Subramaniyam to drop a devastating bishop sacrifice, which if taken would lead to Ilamparthi losing his queen.

Ilamparthi chose to save his queen, but the tactical sequence still led to heavy material loss that ultimately decided the outcome. In the first all-GM encounter on the first board, Muradli of Azerbaijan and the Russian Grebnev shook hands for a draw after just four moves, effectively giving themselves a breather ahead of the expected tougher battles in the later rounds.

The fourth-round results set up a highly anticipated match-up on the first board in Saturday’s fifth round featuring defending champion Muradli facing the top-seed Sarin. Grebnev will take on Subramaniyam on the second board.

Krishna will face reigning Asian blitz champion GM Ivan Zemlyanskii of Russia, who is among a group of eight players in joint second place with three points each, on the third board.

Category B In Category B, Fide Master (FM) Mahdi Nikookar of Iran and Candidate Master (CM) Alankar Sawai Vandan of India remain the only players with perfect scores after four rounds. Nikookar defeated China’s Zhang Zhi, while Vandan outplayed FM Syed Mahfuzur Rahman of Bangladesh.

Nikookar and Vandan will contest the solo leadership in the fifth round. Tournament format, schedule, prizes The tournament follows a 9-round Swiss system with a 90-minute time control plus a 30-second increment per move. Games are played every day from 5pm, except the final round on June 4, which starts at 10am. The awarding ceremony is on June 5.

The tournament offers a prize pool of $52,000 to be handed out to the winners of both categories. Category A, contested by players with a rating over 2300, has a total prize fund of $39,500 with $12,000 going to the champion.

Category B, open to players rated below 2300, offers $12,500 in total prizes and $2,000 awarded to the champion.

Special prizes will also be distributed to top performers among rating categories, unrated, youth, women, and UAE players. International arbiter team and live coverage International Arbiter Majed Al Abdooli of the UAE spearheads the tournament’s international team of arbiters who will manage and oversee the competition.

Chess fans from around the world can watch the Category A games live on the club’s website as well as chess platforms such as lichess.org and chess.com.