Utut Adianto records third successive draw

Utut Adianto records third successive draw

JAKARTA (JP): A 12th-move exchange of pawns enabled Eugenio
Torre of the Philippines to brake Utut Adianto's aggressive
attacks and brought the game to a standstill by the 22nd move in
the third round of the Gunadarma International Grandmaster Chess
Tournament here yesterday.

Utut, Indonesia's top chess player, used his advantage of
playing with the white pieces to force Torre to a Queen's Indian
defense, which is one of Utut's favorites.

Capitalizing on the advantage, Utut staged a series of attacks
which left Torre no room to counter-attack and forced him to play
a defensive game.

After the crucial 12th move, Torre not only escaped Utut's
defensive imprisonment but slowly restored some balance to the
lopsided game. As both players no longer saw any chance to outwit
each other, they agreed to a 22nd draw. It was the third draw in
as many games for Utut.

In other matches, wild card entrant and international master
Dede Liu tied with Poland's Michal Krasenkow after 34 moves. It
was also Liu's the third draw, who had performed impressively on
Wednesday in his draw with Slovak Ftacnik whose elo rating is 205
higher than his.

Two other draws of the day were a 60th-move draw carved by
Hungary's Lajos Portisch and Ftacnik and a 49th-move draw between
Belgium's Mikhail Gurevich and another Indonesian international
master, Ruben Gunawan.

The only winner yesterday was Bosnia-Herzegovina's Ivan
Sokolov. Sokolov, whose elo rating of 2,670 is the highest in the
tournament, beat Germany's Joerg Hickl in the 35th move after
penetrating Hickl's king side defense in the 27th move. (arf)