Dubai: French Grandmaster Romain Edouard won in the fifth and sixth rounds on Saturday to grab the solo lead with five-and-a-half points on the home stretch of the Dubai Open Chess Championship at the Dubai Chess Club.
Edouard beat two former Dubai Open champions, erstwhile solo leader Abhijeet Gupta of India in the morning and GM Vladimir Akopian of Armenia in the evening.
Gupta essayed the Queen’s Gambit and had a strong attack against Edouard but miscalculated his knight sacrifice on the 43rd move and resigned five moves later. In the evening, Edouard penetrated the Sicilian Defense of Akopian with two rooks on the seventh rank and Akopian eventually resigned on the 74th move.
Gupta and Sebastian Bogner of Switzerland trail in second slot at five points each. In round six, Gupta beat GM Pavel Kotsur of Kazakhstan, while Bogner made short work of GM Constantin Lupulescu of Romania.
Thirteen players are bunched together with 4.5 points each. Some 29 other players then trail with four points each with three rounds to go in the nine-round Swiss System tournament.
On the free day last Friday, GM Eduardo Iturrizaga of Venezuela won the Dubai Open Blitz championship, where players have five minutes each for the whole game.
Fifty-five players joined the one-day nine-round Swiss event and four players ended in a tie with seven points each.
Sudden death tie break matches were held. In the semi-finals, Iturrizaga beat Yuriy Kuzubov of Ukraine, while Tigran Petrosian of Armenia thrashed Edouard. In the final, Iturrizaga beat Petrosian to claim the blitz title.
A total of $50,000 (Dh183,000) in cash prizes is up for grabs for the first 16 places, with a top prize of $10,000 for the champion.
