Gibraltar Masters Chess: Abhijeet Gupta stuns Vassily Ivanchuk

Commonwealth champion Abhijeet Gupta stunned Vassily Ivanchuk in 34 moves and S. P. Sethuraman delivered a serious blow to the Grandmaster-norm chances of R. Praggnanandha on way to the joint fifth spot after the eighth round of Tradewise Gibraltar Masters chess tournament here on Tuesday.

Young Nihal Sarin shocked Bulgarian GM Kiril Georgiev, Sandipan Chanda exceeded expectations in holding England’s Michael Adams and



Swapnil

Dhopade proved equal to Nigel Short.

However, P. Hari Krishna suffered a second defeat after running into Israel’s Victor Michaelevski. GM-norm aspirant Prithu Gupta’s unbeaten run ended at the hands of Czech Republic’s Peter Michalik.

With two rounds to go, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Hikaru Nakamura – seeded two and three – shared the lead with Richard Rapport and Daniil Dubov at 6.5 points.