Barua Wrests Title From Thipsay
By Arvind Aaron

The second Mangalore FIDE Rating Tournament took place at Mangalore from July 19-26. It was organised by the South Kanara District Chess Association smoothly.

Second seed Dibyendu Barua won the title on higher tie-break score after he tied for the first place on 9/11 with two Chennai players, C. Praveen Kumar and IM G.B. Prakash of Indian Bank.

In the final round, Barua drew Thipsay with white to wrest the title from the Mumbai veteran.

Barua, born in Chittagong (now Bangladesh), who is with the Tatas is from Kolkata and is playing and winning a rated event after a long time. He told newsmen that fear of losing Elo was the reason for avoiding such events.

A total of 271-players took part in this event which had K.R. Seshadri as the head arbiter. Of this 143 were rated players. The field included two GMs, 8 IMs in all.

Barua, Prakash, Thipsay and Shivananda remained undefeated while C. Praveen Kumar won the most games, nine and lost two.

Amruta Mokal of Pune is gaining a hefty 55 Elo despite losing the last two games! She is playing like a men IM. She scored 7.5/9 and then lost out. Easily an IM norm performance.

Top seed R.R. Laxman went optimistically knowing that Barua and Thipsay would be his main opponents. Instead, he lost to Himanshu Sharma and Sagar Shah and never got to play the two GMs who were rated below him.

Major rating changes: Ritwan Sauntra (+58.5 Elo), Amruta Mokal (+55.2 Elo). Negative changes at the top: Y.G. Vijendra (-46.8), N. Sanjay (-32.4).

Top final placings: 1-3 GM D. Barua, C. Praveen Kumar, IM G.B. Prakash 9/11, 4-7 B.T. Muralikrishnan, GM P.M. Thipsay, IM R. Balasubramaniam, P. Praveen Prasad 8.5 each