Sasi in lead with third win, Humpy opens account

On a day that witnessed four decisive games out of five, top seed Alexey Dreev of Russia and Denmark’s Curt Hansen registered smooth victories over Denmark’s Peter Heine Nielsen and Poland’s Michal Krasenkow respectively and remained within striking distance of Sasikiran and McShane tallying an identical four points from their six games.

The race for the title has virtually boiled down between these four with just three rounds remaining in this category-15 tournament. Dreev has to play his last three matches against Hansen, Sasikiran and McShane while Sasikiran has to tackle Hansen besides Nielsen and Dreev.

Schandorff, Krasenkow and Nielsen jointly hold the fifth spot while Dominiguez and his compatriot Bruzon Lazaro share the eighth position on two points apiece.

GM Koneru Humpy finally managed to break her losing streak securing her first point in the tournament scoring over a terribly off form Lazaro who suffered his third loss on the trot.

For Sasikiran it turned out to be another long and satisfying day in office. Playing with black pieces, the Chennai player employed the Semi Slav Defence and had little problems in getting a double edged position with his compromising play in the early stages of the middle game.

Sensing trouble after Sasikiran effectively deployed pieces which netted him a passed pawn on the queenside, Schandorff went on an exchange spree in a bid to equalise.

However, that cost the Dane dearly as Sasikiran exerted pressure on the weak queen pawn and forcibly won it after the trade of queens. A long grind ensued thereafter where Schandorff had to face customary agony in the pawn-less endgame. It took Sasikiran 56 moves to register his third straight victory in the tournament.

Humpy finally opened her account in the tournament using Lazaro’s blunder to her advantage. Lazaro himself has been struggling in the tournament after a good start and that gave Humpy a fair chance.

The opening had nothing for the Cuban who played black and Humpy got a balanced middle game without much ado. Lazaro made the decisive error on the 37th move and Humpy pounced on the opportunity to finish matters just two moves later.