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)