Ivanchuk, Krasenkov maintain lead

CHENNAI, MAY 14. Ukrainian star Vassily Ivanchuk and Michal Krasenkov of Poland scored contrasting second round victories to maintain their winning spree in the Leonid Stein Memorial chess tournament at Lviv in Ukraine on a decisive Saturday.

While Ivanchuk gave a treatise of excellent technique in the rook ending in his 60-move victory over Boris Gelfand of Israel, Krasenkov was quite lucky to post a 47-move victory over veteran Viktor Korchnoi of Switzerland. Ivanchuk and Krasenkov are leading the six-player category 17 round robin tournament with two points from as many games.

Ivanchuk's victory came with the black pieces and is an excellent example for the endgame theme with the active rook prevailing over the dormant one. On the other encounter, Krasenkov who was defending a back to the wall situation came up with a surprise attack in the post time scramble and benefited from a back rank mistake of Korchnoi.

In the third encounter, which was also decisive, Romanishin pinned a knight and forced Beliavsky to resign his second straight game after 34 moves.

The results (2nd round): M.Krasenkov (Pol) bt. V.Korchnoi (Swz), B.Gelfand (Isr) lost to V.Ivanchuk (Ukr), O.Romanishin (Ukr) bt. A.Beliavsky (Slv).

The standings: 1-2 V.Ivanchuk, M.Krasenkov 2/2 each, 3 O.Romanishin 1, 4-5 B.Gelfand, V.Korchnoi 0.5 each, 6 A.Beliavsky 0.

- Our Chess Correspondent

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