Utut held to draw by Kuzmin in Biel

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