RI's Utut beats China's Ye to keep hopes alive

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's number one chess player, grandmaster Utut Adianto kept his hopes of winning the BNI international chess tournament here alive when he beat his Chinese opponent Ye Jiangchuan on the 37th move yesterday.

Playing with the advantageous white pieces, Ye let Utut develop his favorite Caro-Kann defense. The Chinese player took an early lead by blocking Utut's kingside square on the 11th move before Utut was even able to castle.

But on the 26th move Utut landed a heavy blow to Ye's defense by moving his d4 queen to e3 to pinch both Ye's f2 rook and his d1 queen.

Utut's e3 queen, if moved to e1, would have checkmated Ye's king. If Ye had moved his d1 queen Utut would have captured Ye's f2 rook.

A frustrated Ye took the risk of sacrificing his rook on the 35th move to gain room. But it did not help him escape from the impending doom. To make matters worse, since the 30th move Ye was left with only two minutes to complete 10 moves.

With two games left, Utut now lies joint third in the standings along with newly-crowned international master Ruben Gunawan on six points. Joerg Hickl of Germany maintained his lead with 7, ahead of England's Julian Hodgson on 6.5.

The ninth session yesterday saw Danny Yuswanto fail to follow in the footsteps of Ruben who earned his international master title after collecting 5.5 points on Wednesday. Danny lost to compatriot grandmaster Ardiansyah after 33 moves, leaving him stuck on 4.5 points.

The other results yesterday were (Indonesian unless otherwise stated, those mentioned first playing white): grandmaster (GM) Vladislav Tkachiev of Kazakhstan drew with GM Joerg Hickl of Germany on the 33th move on a Modern defense, Sjarif Machmud lost to GM Edhi Handoko on the 39th move on a Queens Indian defense, GM Julian Hodgson of Britain beat Ivan Jonathan Situru on the 63rd move on a Trompowsky defense and International Master Ruben Gunawan drew with Cerdas Barus after 14 moves on a Caro-Kann defense. (arf)

Provisional standings after yesterday's matches: 1. Hickl 7 points 2. Hodgson 6.5 pts 3. Utut, Ruben 6 pts 4. Tkachiev 5.5 pts 5. Ye 5 pts 6. Danny 4.5 pts 7. Edhi, Cerdas 4 pts 8. Ardiansyah 3 pts 9. Situru 1.5 pts 10. Sjarif 1 pts