Parimarjan Negi finally found his rhythm and grabbed an interesting win over Tomike Sanikidze in the seventh round to move up to the joint second spot at the International Chess Festival Baku Open.
Defending champion Sergei Zhigalko leads the standings with 5.5 points while Negi is tied for second along with three others at 5 points.
Asian champion Negi, who is still unbeaten in this tournament, has drawn his last three games, but won the seventh round against Georgian Sanikidze (2586) to keep his title hopes alive.
“Today was a wild game. I surprised him with an interesting novelty, and he took almost an hour to deal with it,” Negi said.
“Eventually the time difference turned out to be the key, even though I missed chances to finish the game cleanly. But under increasing time pressure he failed to find the correct defences in a wild game. It was nice to win after three draws.”
The eighth round could see a pairing between Negi and Zhigalko and that may well give the Indian a chance to move ahead.
Joining Negi at five points was Rauf Mamedov, who registered a convincing victory over overnight joint leader, Baris Esen.
Mikheil Mchedlishivli also joined them with five points overcoming Gulnar Mammadova.
The nine-round Swiss tournament is being held near the famous Aqua Park near Caspian Sea and carries a purse of $ 50,000 with the winner taking home $10,000.
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