Negi shocked by Howell

Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi suffered a shock defeat at the hands of David Howell of England in the eighth round of the Young grandmasters tournament, a part of the 43rd Biel Chess festival in Biel.

Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi suffered a shock defeat at the hands of David Howell of England in the eighth round of the Young grandmasters tournament, a part of the 43rd Biel Chess festival in Biel.

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Luckless till now, Negi's succumbed to his fourth loss in the category-17 tournament and as a result fell below the 2600 ELO rating mark for the first time this year.

Howell elevated himself to the ninth spot on three points while Negi is now last on just two points.

In the final round, Negi will meet top seed Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.

It turned out to be another tough day in office for young Negi as he misplayed another promising position in the tournament.

Playing the black side of a Sicilian Alapin, all was well in Negi's position in the ensuing middle game and even after the exchange of queens, the experts preferred his position with black pieces.

However as the game progressed, Negi allowed Howell an exchange sacrifice that proved dangerous, the English was soon on top as he wiped out all black pawns on both flanks. The game lasted 52 moves.

Caruana played out a draw with Russian Dmitry Andreikin in his eighth round match. Caruana's was in fact, the lone draw of the day as the battle heated up and the day produced as many as four decisive games out of a possible five.

Anish Giri of Holland coasted to a fine victory against Wesley So of Philippines while Evgeny Tomashevsky of Russia was on the receiving end against Vietnamese Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son.

As a result of this bloodbath after a near lull in the previous round when all the games had ended in draws, Truong Son now shares the third spot with Andreikin while Giri, Tomashevsky, So and Rodshtein are joint fifth on four points apiece.