Utut held to draw by Russia's Deviatkin
Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Grand Master (GM) Utut Adianto of Indonesia failed to tame Russian IM Andrei Deviatkin and had to be content with a draw in their seventh round game at the Aeroflot Open chess tournament in Moscow on Monday.
A draw was imminent when a three-time repeated move was unavoidable after 22 moves, which was Utut's shortest game so far at the tournament, which features 201 players, 136 of whom are GM-rated.
Utut, whose current elo-rating is 2562 against Deviatkin's 2487, played out a Caro-Kann game for more than two hours at the Rossija Hotel, according to Utut's companion Kristianus Liem.
It was Utut's second draw in addition to his three wins and two losses to give him an overall total of 4 points in the provisional standings from seven of the planned nine rounds.
"Deviatkin who seems to feel like he was a class apart from Utut was apparently moving his pieces around in hopes of a draw although he held white," Kristianus said in a release here on Tuesday.
"That was imminent when he opted for a knight move to the c5 square on move five. This maneuver is known to be leading to a draw.
"Entering the middle of the game, Deviatkin always chose moves which were safe and risk-free," Kristianus said.
Utut was forced to repeat his queen move between c4 and c7 squares. Otherwise, he would have fallen into a poor position.
"I had to accept the repeated moves as another continuation move would have benefited white. I could have lost if I had forced myself to take another tack," Utut was quoted as saying.
GM Alexei Alexandrov (2633) leads alone at the top of the leaderboard with 6 points after he registered another win on the day over fellow Russian GM Vadim Zvjaginsev (2671).
Following behind with 5.5 points are GM Viktor Bologan (2630) of Moldova, GM Alexei Fedorov (2579) of Russia and GM Maxim Sorokin (2560) of Argentina.
Separately in Jakarta, junior player Tirta Chandra upset FM Sukirman Teddy in the third round of the 16-strong Gunadarma "elo-rating" chess tournament on Tuesday.
Tirta, a 16-year-old, has booked 2.5 points from three rounds and is half a point behind leader GM Edhi Handoko, whose third win came at the expense of FM Yoseph Majella.
Susanto Megaranto, the other junior contender at the tournament, has won once and drawn twice to amass 2 points along with five other participants.
Sukirman and FM Maksum Firdaus remain pointless after losing out in all of their three pairings.
Deviatkin, A (2487) - Adianto, U (2562) 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Nc5 b6 6.Nb3 e6 7.Nf3 Nf6 8.g3 Nbd7 9.Bg2 Bb4+ 10.c3 Bd6 11.0-0 0-0 12.Qe2 Qc7 13.h3 h6 14.Re1 Rac8 15.Ne5 c5 16.Nc4 cxd4 17.Nxd6 d3 18.Nb5 Qc4 19.Nd6 Qc7 20.Nb5 Qc4 21.Nd6 Qc7 22.Nb5 Qc4