Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran defeated compatriot Sandipan Chanda to jump to the joint fourth spot after the end of the fifth round of Aeroflot International open chess tournament.
It was a game of fluctuating fortunes in which Sasikiran prevailed thanks to excellent calculations in wild complications. Chanda held the edge for the major part of the game and won a piece playing white. Sasikiran got counter play after a couple of errors by Chanda and he capitalised on them to romp home in 46 moves.
Indian results (Round V, Indians unless stated otherwise):
Group ‘A’: Evgeny Alekseev (Rus, 3.5) drew Abhijeet Gupta (3.5); Sandipan Chanda (2.5) lt to Krishnan Sasikiran (3.5); SP Sethuraman (3) drew Parimarjan Negi (3); B Adhiban lt to Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 3); Vidit Gujrathi (3) bt Boris Savchenko (Rus, 2); Ivan Morovic Fernandez (Chi, 2.5) bt D Harika (1.5); MR Venkatesh (1.5) lt to Ghaem Maghami Ehsan (Iri, 2.5); M Shyam Sundar (1.5) lt to Daniel Alsina Leal (Esp, 2.5).
Group ‘B’: MR Lalith Babu (3.5) drew Wen Yang (Chn, 3.5); Sundararajan Kidambi (3.5) drew Tigran Kotanjian (Arm, 3.5); Evgenij Kalegin (Rus, 4) bt Sahaj Grover (3); Dmitry Obolenskikh (Rus, 3.5) drew Vaibhav Suri (3.5); Munguntuul Batkhuyag (Mgl, 4) bt Tejas Bakre (3); Viktor Mikhalevski (Isr, 3.5) bt Akshayraj Kore (2.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (2.5) lt to Ivan Aldokhin (Rus, 3.5); Swayams Mishra (2.5) lt to P Shyam Nikil (3.5); Mikhail Mozharov (Rus, 3.5) bt Ankit Rajpara (2.5): S Nitin (2) lt to Andrey Rychagov (Rus, 3); Arsseny Alavkin (Rus, 2) lt to S Arun Prasad (3); Mikolai Kabanov (Rus, 2.5) drew Padmini Rout (2.5); Anuar Ismagambetov (3) bt Debashis Das (2); Alexander Krapivin (Rus, 3) bt Mary Ann Gomes (2); Nisha Mohota (2.5) drew Oleg Badmatsyrenov (Rus, 2.5); Andreas Diermair (Aut, 2.5) drew Eesha Karavade (2.5); Robert Kreisl (Aut, 2.5) drew Ivana Maria Furtado (2.5); Soumya Swaminathan (2.5) bt John Paul Gomez (Phi, 1.5).
Group ‘C’: Qu Yanqiao (Chn, 4) lt to Aravindh Chithambaram (5); Victor Plotkin (Can, 3.5) lt to R Bharathi (4.5); Denis Vorobjov (Rus, 3) lt to Akash Iyer (4); Konstantin Bronnikov (Rus, 3) lt to U Ashwini (4); Abdumalik Zhansaya (Kaz, 3.5) bt Bhakti Kulkarni (2.5); Aryan Tari (Nor, 3.5) bt Niklesh Jain (2.5); G Lasya (2.5) lt to Mark Basencyan (Arm, 3.5); Meenu Priya (3) drew Afshari Mohammadreza (Iri, 3).