Utut held to draw by Kuzmin in Biel

After bouncing back from his seventh-round upset loss with two back-to-back wins, Grand Master (GM) Utut Adianto of Indonesia had to be content with a draw in the tenth round of the Biel Master chess tournament in Biel, Switzerland, on Thursday.

Utut failed to make the best of the advantage of playing with white against GM Alexei Kuzmin as a draw was agreed after both were involved in a 67-move game in six hours and 20 minutes.

"I played the main variation of the King's Indian (opening). The game ran tough. He was one pawn up but my pieces were more active," Utut said in a release here on Friday.

The Biel Master games can be downloaded on www.bielchessfestival.

Kuzmin, whose elo-rating is ten higher than the Indonesian's 2573, was left with a Rook, Knight and three pawns in the final position against Utut's Rook, Knight and two pawns, but the Russian appeared to be unable to convert his one-pawn advantage into a win.

Utut, who won the tournament in 1994, suffered an upset defeat from IM Nikola Sedlak (2528) in the seventh round, his only loss in as many matches at the tournament, before recovering his winning form with victories over GM Jusef Petkevics and GM Andrej Shariyazdanov in the following two rounds.

With the final round still to be played, Utut, who has registered five wins, four draws and a loss, stays among a ten- player pack with 7 points each.

The leaders of the pack with 7.5 points apiece are GM Boris Avrukh of Israel, GM Mikhail Ulybin of United States and GM Vladislav Tkachiev of France.

Tkachiev and Ulybin won their tenth-round matches over GM Mohamad Al-Modiahki and Mohamad Al-Sayed, both from Qatar, respectively, while Avrukh drew with GM Milos Pavlovic of Yugoslavia. --JP