Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly of India and eleven other Indian Grandmasters and International Masters maintained the lead with two points after two rounds of the 20th Dubai Open Chess Championship at the Dubai Chess Club in Dubai.
Tied for the lead are Indian GMs S.P. Sethuraman, S.I. Narayanan, Debashis Das, Prasanna Vishnu, Abhijeet Gupta, Shardul Gagare, Kidambi Sundararajan, P. Iniyan, P. Karthikeyan and International Masters Reddy Chakfavarthi and Venkataraman Karthik.
Top seed Grandmaster Yuriy Kryvoruchko of Ukraine beat Ravi Haria of England in 35 moves of a Reti Opening to set the pace. Kryvoruchko, 32, a former Ukrainian champion, has two points together with Grandmasters, David Anton Guijarro of Spain, Aleksandr Rakhmanov, Sergey Volkov and Petr Kiriakov of Russia, Sandro Mareco of Argentina, Ahmed Adly of Egypt, Mustafa Yilmaz of Turkey, Eduardo Iturrrizaga Bonelli of Venezuela, Alexander Zubov of Ukarine, Levan Pantulaia of Georgia, Sebastian Chistiansen Johan of Norway and Ehsan Ghaem Maghami and Arash Tahbaz of Iran.
A record 164 players from 33 countries are seeing action in the strong tournament including 36 Grandmasters, 24 International Masters, 5 Woman Grandmasters, 7 Woman International Masters, 16 FIDE Masters and 4 Woman FIDE Masters.
Under the Patronage of Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the tournament is a 9-round Swiss system with games scheduled 5:30 pm daily except for Saturday, 7 April, when two rounds are scheduled 10am and 6pm. At stake is a total of $50,000 in cash prizes with a top prize of $13,000 for the champion. Top games are broadcast live on the internet. Visit official site www.dubaichess.ae or find full results and standings in chess-results.com.
