Grandmaster title for Akshayraj

Akshayraj Kore became the latest Indian chess player to achieve the Grandmaster title after he came up with a career-best rating performance to win the ‘A’ category of Cannes Festival that concluded in the French city.

It turned out to be a grand double for the Pune-based International Master, who registered his fist victory in an international tournament. Just a few days before the tournament, Kore had made his third and final norm at the Rochefort tournament in France and the fourth inconsequential norm here came as an added bonus.

Going in to the final round as the sole leader on 6.5 points, Kore defeated International Master Alexander Donchenko of Germany to complete his best ever tournament performance.

Kore finished with a rating performance of 2743 points, way above his modest 2455 ELO rating at the start of the tournament.

The results at Rochefort and Cannes will take the Indian past the 2500 rating barrier and he is now set to become the next Grandmaster of the country.
“This is indeed a flattering result and I am very pleased to have completed the GM title”, said a beaming Kore from Cannes.

When asked what he termed as his best game, the Indian conceded that it was a tough choice. “I generally played way above my strength here for some reasons, I guess the win against Safarli Eltaj and Glenn Flear were my two best games in recent times,” he said.

With Kore finishing on 7.5 points, the second place was shared by Grandmasters Ruben Felgaer of Argentina and ELtaz who both ended a half point behind.