Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran cruised to a fine victory against Grandmaster Konstantin Landa of Russia in the fifth round of the 'A1' section of Aeroflot Internationalopen chess tournament.
Sasikiran with 3.5 points is joint second behind a pack of five players, including Vladimir Akopian of Armenia, emerged as joint leaders on 4 points each.
Sandipan Chanda is on 3 points after drawing his fifth round game against Alexei Fedorov of Belarus and National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly registered his first win in the event to be at 2 points.
International Master and double GM norm hodler Neelotpal Das remained on course for what would be his final GM norm after defeating IM L Victor Ivanov of Russia in a keenly contested game.
The victory took Neelotpal Das to 4 points of a possible five for a joint third spot behind two leaders on 4.5 points in the 'A2' section being held simultaneously.
The Kolkata-based now needs to meet a few Grandmasters in the remaining three rounds and needs to score decently to become the next Grandmaster of the country.
However, the norm aspirations of young Indians suffered a setback in this section as Parimarjna Negi, Deep Sengupta and Abhijeet Gupta tasted defeats in the fifth round.
{{/usCountry}}However, the norm aspirations of young Indians suffered a setback in this section as Parimarjna Negi, Deep Sengupta and Abhijeet Gupta tasted defeats in the fifth round.
{{/usCountry}}Negi was beaten by GM Valeri Yandemirov of Russia while Italian GM Michele Godena proved too strong for Sengupta and Gupta could not quite compete against Vladimir Dobrov of Russia.