Mihail Nikitenko got the better of Luka Paichadze.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Grandmaster Mihail Nikitenko beat Grandmaster Luka Paichadze to join Abhijeet Gupta in the lead with seven points at the end of the eighth round in the Delhi GM Open chess tournament at the Tivoli Gardens, Chhattarpur, on Thursday.
In an even battle, Nikitenko hooked a knight on the 55th move and Paichadze promptly resigned.
Overnight sole leader Abhijeet drew with Manuel Petrosyan, with two more rounds to go in the Swiss League competition.
In the ninth round, Nikitenko will play black against Abhijeet. There are 12 players with 6.5 points and 16 players with six points, which could lead to a very lively climax.
On the second board, Mamikon Gharibyan will play top seed S.L. Narayanan. Diptayan Ghosh will play Van Huy Nguyen.
The results (eighth round): Manuel Petrosyan 6.5 drew with Abhijeet Gupta 7; S.L. Narayanan 6.5 drew with Neelash Saha 6.5; Mihail NIkitenko 7 bt Luka Paichadze 6; Aronyak Ghosh 6.5 drew with Vitaly Sivuk 6.5; Diptayan Ghosh 6.5 bt Boris Savchenko 6; Aditya Samant 6.5 bt Saravana Krishnan 5.5; Mamikon Gharibyan 6.5 bt Abhishek Kelkar 5.5; Mikulas Manik 6 drew with Adarsh Sriram 6; Viresh Sharnarthi 6.5 bt Hari Madhavan 5.5; Amit Agrawal 5.5 lost to Aleksej Aleksandrov 6.5; EU Ahaz 5.5 lost to Van Huy Nguyen 6.5; Semetei Tegin 6 drew with Arnav Agrawal 6; S. Nitin 6.5 bt Soham Roy 5.5; Alok Sinha 5 lost to Karthik Venkataraman 6; Deepan Chakkravarthy 6 bt Harshit Sahu 5; Alekhya Mukhopadhyay 5 lost to Harsh Suresh 6.
Published – June 12, 2025 06:26 pm IST
