Sasikiran in joint lead at Dubai Open

DUBAI: Top seeded Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran dumped Greek Stelios Halkias to join the leading group after the end of the fifth round of Dubai International open chess tournament.
After a draw with compatriot S Satyapragyan in the second round, Sasikiran scored his third victory on the trot against Grandmaster opposition in one of the strongest Asian open.
Sasikiran joined over night leader and compatriot Parimarjan Negi in lead along with Mikheil Mcdlishvili of Georgia.
Negi was held to a draw by Csaba Balogh of Hungary while McDlishvili accounted for Sergey Volkov of Russia to be on the top of the tables in the $45000 prize money event.
With four rounds still to come, former World Junior Champion Abhijeet Gupta announced his arrival near to the top by disposing the challenge of compatriot IM Swapnil Dhopade.
Abhijeet now shares the fourth spot on 4 points along with GM RR Laxman, giant killer M Shyam Sundar and 14 others.
Shyam Sundar, in fact, remained in contention for a Grandmaster norm by holding GM GAdir Guseinov of Azerbaijan to a draw. If everything works right for him, Sundar should make the norm with a 50 per cent score in the last four rounds.
RR Laxman was quite impressive amongst Indians as he scalped for Nidjat Mamedov of Azerbaijan.
Amongst other Indians in the fray, Anwesh Upadhyaya suffered a setback when he lost to Alexei Fedorov of Belarus while former National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly scored over Sopiko Khukhashvili of Georgia to brace himself for the final lap.
Sasikiran overpowered Halkias from an English opening game with black pieces. The Indian got a semblance of an initiative in the early stages of the middle game with a central breakthrough and remained on top thereafter till the end of the game.
With methodical play, Sasikiran got a passed pawn in the center and made his advantage decisive with a powerful king side attack towards the end of the game. Halkias called it a day after 48 moves.
Balogh Csaba went for a very uncompromising variation against Negi in a Sicilian Najdorf game but could not find more than a draw as the Indian defended well. In the end Balogh had to force matters through perpetual checks.