KAVALA (Greece), July 29:
Grandmaster and National champion Abhijeet Gupta outplayed Tornike Sanikidze of Georgia to join compatriot Surya Shekhar Ganguly in lead after the end of the fifth round of Kavala International chess tournament here today.
With his third victory on the trot, Gupta took his tally to 4.5 points out of a possible five to match Ganguly who played out a draw with top seed Tigran Petrosian of Armenia.
With four rounds still to come, the two leaders are followed by a pack of five players including Petrosian and S P Sethuraman who have four points each. In the next round, Ganguly will meet Gupta with the former having the advantage of playing with white pieces.
The lower-placed Indians bounced back in the fifth round and notable amongst them was Grandmaster Neelotpal Das who scored a comeback victory against Poulidis Stefanos of Greece.
Akshayraj Kore and S Nitin also scored victories against lower-ranked opponents. While Das inched himself up to 3.5 points, Kore and Nitin are now on three points apiece.
Amongst other Indians in the fray, S P Sethuraman scored over Sinisa Saric of Serbia. The Chennai-based was unperturbed after the loss against Ganguly in the previous round and recorded his fourth victory in five games.
The GM norm aspirations of Ashwin Jayaram and G A Stany, however, suffered setbacks as they went down to Greeks Ioannis Papaioannou and Dimitrios Ladopoulos respectively.
The day belonged to Gupta, who cast a brilliant web to outclass Sanikidze. (PTI)
The Georgian played the queens gambit declined but found Gupta surprisingly well-armed. The surprise boomeranged and Sanikidze was forced to spend some time on his clock.
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