Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran put it across GM Andrei Kharitonov of Russia and moved to joint fifth spot after the conclusion of the sixth round of ‘A’ group in the Aeroflot international open chess tournament here.Four players — GMs Ferenc Berkes of Hungary and Russians Valerij Filippov, Pavel Tregubov and Alexander rustemov — emerged as joint leaders with a tally of five points each with three rounds remaining in this $25000 first prize event that is played under FIDE Swiss rules.Sasikiran is in the next pack of 16 players with 4.5 points in his kitty so far and will now meet GM Tomasz Markowski of Poland in the next round with white pieces.The other Indian hope in this section, Lanka Ravi’s aspiration for his second GM norm suffered a setback as he went down fighting against GM Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia and could not add to his score of 3.5 points. Despite the loss, Ravi is still in contention for the norm but needs a couple of big victories. The other Indian contestants had a bad day with seasoned GM Praveen Thipsay and GM Sandipan Chanda suffering losses against Leonid Yurtaev of Kyrgyzstan and Athan Mastrovasilis of Greece respectively to remain on two points while Neelotpal Das drew with Vladimir Potkin of Russia to reach three. In group ‘B’, P Konguvel has surely turned into a dark horse. The Indian recorded his fifth straight victory and took his tally to 5.5 points out of a possible 7. On the receiving end this time was Nikolay Ogloblin who had played excellently in the first half of the tournament.For once, this section witnessed a change in the lead-pack with David Arutinian of Georgia coming out good against overnight leader Beniamin Galstian of Armenia.
