Hoogeveen International Chess: Abhijeet Gupta retains title in style

Grandmaster and Commonwealth champion Abhijeet Gupta created history at the Hoogeveen International chess tournament by becoming the first player to win the title twice in a row in the Fide Open that concluded at the Dutch hamlet.

Defending champion Abhijeet lived up to his top billing, and scored 7.5 points out of a possible nine to win the title solely ahead of second placed Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda.

It was an Indian sweep as the third and fourth places were bagged by GM M.R. Lalith Babu and GM M. Shyam Sundar, respectively.

Abhijeet got off to a roaring start with four victories on the trot and then played out a draw with Lalith Babu, who kept pace with the eventual winner for a long time.

In the sixth round, Abhijeet won against Migchiel De Jong while in the seventh another victory against compatriot S. Nitin followed with relative ease.

Speaking about the event, Abhijeet singled out his game against Jan Werle as one of the better ones in the tournament.

“Generally the games were much better and I think the game against Werle which was quite complicated set the tone for me here,” Abhijeet said.

The winner was also all praise for fellow Indians.

“This is quite impressive and probably never happened before in an International Open, it was a complete Indian domination right from the beginning, first me and Lalith and towards the end Sandipan played some really cool chess.”