Sasikiran scores over Sandipan

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).