Abhijit Kunte of PSPB, a former national champion and winner of the 2004 edition of the tournament, emerged sole leader with perfect four points in four rounds of the sixth Kolkata Open (19th International Open Grandmasters Chess Tournament) at Gorky Sadan here today.
Vidit Gujarathi of PSPB and J Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu are half a point behind, while 10 others lie on third spot with three points each.
Opening with a queen pawn game, Kunte played a slow and steady game to develop his pieces against Abdulla Al-Rakib, a Bangladesh grandmaster on the second board.
After exchanging the minor pieces, Kunte's queen and rook controlled the seventh rank and his extra b-pawn began to roll towards the eighth rank.
Abdullah resigned on the 34th move, when one more rook was about to seize the initiative on the seventh rank.
Young GM Gujrathi of Maharashtra settled for 31 move draw against J Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu in a game arising out of Slav defence on the first board.
The third board game between Kivanac Haznedaroglu of Turkey and Oliver Barbosa of Philippines and the fourth board game between Kolkata's young IM Diptayan Ghosh and giant killer GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh also ended quickly on the expected lines - a draw.
In some of the decisive games among the top boards, Pantsulaia Levan of Georgia prevailed over his opponent P Shyam Nikil from Tamil Nadu, as the latter could not stop the marching pawns at the end.
In an interesting game, B Adhiban of PSPB employed Sicilian defence against the Australian IM Ly Moulthun and grabbed a bishop on 22nd move.
He under promoted his e-pawn to a knight to fork his opponent's king and queen and to win the game in 49 moves.
Gregorian Avetik of Armenia tried in vain to win a rook and rook pawn ending against Kolkata's GM Neelotpal Das and split the point.
Railways' international master K Rathnakaran dashed the hopes of former under 12 world champion Deep Sengupta of Kolkata, with a convincing win.
Top seed Nigel Short of England was held to a draw by ICF's international master P Karthikeyan.
