Krishna beats holder Muradli, goes on top in Dubai chess tourney

International Master (IM) S Rohith Krishna of India defeated defending champion GM Mahammad Muradli of Azerbaijan to rise to the top of the standings in a tie with Grandmaster (GM) Aleksey Grebnev of Russia after Sunday night’s sixth round of the 25th Dubai Open Chess Tournament at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club. Grebnev, the overnight solo leader, drew with top-seed GM Nihal Sarin on the first board, allowing Krishna to join him for the lead with five points each.

The two players will face each other in the seventh round. Nihal remains in joint second place with 4.5 points, alongside his compatriot GM Bharath Subramaniyam, GM Ivan Zemlyanskii of Russia, GM Shant Sargsyan of Armenia, and GM Sina Movahed of Iran.

Muradli, playing black, sacrificed a pawn on move six in a delayed Benko Gambit and a few moves later the game reached a position that was previously seen in a game between world number two Hikaru Nakamura and former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov.

Muradli, however, deviated on move 13, a questionable decision that allowed Krishna to gain time to reinforce his central pawns and plant an uncontested knight on the c4-square, the white knight’s ideal outpost in the Benko Gambit.

It was all downhill from thereon for Muradli as Krishna managed to create a powerful passed pawn on the a-file and a strong initiative in the queenside. Muradli sacrificed his rook for a bishop and to eliminate the dangerous passed pawn, while pinning his hopes on his passer on the c-file, but Krishna’s two rooks proved more than a match for Muradli’s bishop-and-rook combo in the endgame.

Sarin took risks to unbalance the position and create chances against Grebnev, leaving his king in the center and launching a kingside pawn storm, but the Russian defended accurately and the game ended in a draw by repetition of moves.

In Category B, Fide Master (FM) Mahdi Nikookar of Iran won his sixth straight game to remain the only player with a perfect score in the tournament. Nikookar defeated Candidate Master (CM) Allayar Shirliyev of Turkmenistan for his sixth point, half a point ahead of Sri Lanka’s Pesandu Rashmitha Liyanage, who has 5.5 points after winning over FM Sajid Sakline Mostafa of Bangladesh.

CM Alankar Sawai Vandan of India and Davit Baghdasaryan of Armenia are in joint third place with five points each.

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, while 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 & 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.

Earlier, Grandmaster (GM) Aleksey Grebnev grabbed the pole position after emerging as the lone winner among the erstwhile co-leaders in Saturday night’s fifth round of the 25th Dubai Open Chess Tournament at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club.

The 18-year-old Russian talent played the Sicilian Defence and then accepted and ultimately refuted a rare pawn gambit line unleashed by the Indian GM Bharath Subramaniyam to pick up his fourth win against a lone draw and no losses.

Subramaniyam initially succeeded in keeping Grebnev’s king stuck in the centre, but the Indian lost his way in the complications when he allowed a queen trade that left him a pawn down in the endgame - and where the Russian’s previously vulnerable king became an active asset.