GM Vaibhav Suri scored a big win by beating Swapnil Dhopade and joining the leaders
| Lennart Ootes
Swapnil Dhopade vs Vaibhav Suri, Round 8
Black has just moved his rook to c7. How did Vaibhav take advantage of this fact?
Black is a pawn up, but White's play is very easy. Mainly because the black pawns are very weak and the bishop on e6 is passive. White plays his pieces on dark squares and puts a lot of pressure on Black's position. But breaking through is not easy. In the above position Vaibhav found an excellent combination starting with e4!
A fantastic move! fxe4 is not possible as the queen is hanging. Swapnil took dxe4 and...
...Vaibhav took the bishop on e6! Now fxe6 loses to Rd7+ and Qxe6 as was played in the game is met with Rd6! attacking the queen and if it moves, the h6 pawn falls. Swapnil had a few more tricks under his sleeve but Vaibhav was accurate and the game was all over!
The battle between Aravindh Chithambaram and Vishnu Prasanna ended in a draw | Photo: Atul Kumar Gupta
Stany managed to beat overnight leader Anurag Mhamal showing the power of two bishops! | Photo: Niklesh Jain
Deep Sengupta won his game against Harshvardhan GB and joined the leaders | Photo: Niklesh Jain
Deepan Chakkravarthy beat Rajesh VAV | Photo: Atul Kumar Gupta
Top seed Abhijeet Gupta (left) is slowly coming back into the reckoning after his win over Sammed Shete.
| Photo: Atul Kumar Gupta
Showing some great chess at the event in veteran GM Pravin Thipsay who beat IM Vignesh NR (2455) | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Results of round 8:
Standings after round 8:
| Rk. | SNo | Name | FED | Rtg | Club/City | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | |
| 1 | 4 | GM | Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. | IND | 2584 | TN | 6,5 | 0,0 | 39,0 | 42,5 |
| 2 | 12 | IM | Stany G.A. | IND | 2509 | AAI | 6,5 | 0,0 | 38,5 | 42,5 |
| 3 | 3 | GM | Vaibhav Suri | IND | 2589 | PSPB | 6,5 | 0,0 | 37,5 | 41,5 |
| 4 | 5 | GM | Sengupta Deep | IND | 2565 | PSPB | 6,5 | 0,0 | 37,5 | 41,0 |
| 5 | 13 | GM | Anurag Mhamal | IND | 2491 | GOA | 6,0 | 0,0 | 38,5 | 42,5 |
| 6 | 1 | GM | Gupta Abhijeet | IND | 2597 | PSPB | 6,0 | 0,0 | 38,0 | 41,5 |
| 7 | 10 | GM | Vishnu Prasanna. V | IND | 2518 | TN | 6,0 | 0,0 | 37,5 | 40,0 |
| 8 | 7 | GM | Deepan Chakkravarthy J. | IND | 2550 | RSPB | 6,0 | 0,0 | 36,0 | 39,5 |
| 9 | 27 | GM | Thipsay Praveen M | IND | 2400 | MAH | 6,0 | 0,0 | 35,5 | 39,0 |
| 10 | 20 | IM | Nitin S. | IND | 2450 | RSPB | 6,0 | 0,0 | 32,0 | 35,5 |
| 11 | 24 | GM | Bakre Tejas | IND | 2433 | AI | 6,0 | 0,0 | 32,0 | 35,0 |
| 12 | 66 | Harshavardhan G B | IND | 2163 | TN | 5,5 | 0,0 | 37,5 | 40,5 | |
| 13 | 15 | IM | Karthikeyan P. | IND | 2482 | RSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 36,5 | 40,0 |
| 14 | 25 | GM | Neelotpal Das | IND | 2412 | PSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 36,0 | 39,5 |
| 15 | 14 | GM | Swapnil S. Dhopade | IND | 2490 | RSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 36,0 | 39,0 |
| 16 | 36 | IM | Rathnakaran K. | IND | 2366 | RSPB | 5,5 | 0,0 | 35,5 | 38,5 |
| 17 | 55 | FM | Navalgund Niranjan | IND | 2240 | KAR | 5,5 | 0,0 | 35,5 | 38,0 |
| 18 | 34 | Sammed Jaykumar Shete | IND | 2378 | MAH | 5,5 | 0,0 | 35,0 | 38,0 | |
| 19 | 22 | IM | Akash G | IND | 2443 | TN | 5,5 | 0,0 | 33,0 | 36,5 |
| 20 | 9 | GM | Karthik Venkataraman | IND | 2527 | AP | 5,5 | 0,0 | 32,5 | 35,0 |
