Sasikiran sole leader

Eight players including Koneru Humpy and Surya Shekhar Ganguly are at the third spot with four points.

India number two K Sasikiran of ONGC maintained a perfect score to emerge as sole leader with five points at the end of the fifth round of the 19th Inter-Petroleum Unit Individual Chess Tournament here on Tuesday.

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Former National Champion Abhijit Kunte of IOCL is half a point behind the leader.

Eight players including women world number two Koneru Humpy and national champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly are at the third spot with four points.

In an interesting battle, Sasikiran went an exchange up against Ganguly. Both were under time pressure and Ganguly resigned when Sasikiran marched his outside passer pawn to eighth rank.

Kunte scored over Abijit gupta of BPCL and international master V Saravanan of BPCL shocked grandmaster Neelotpal Das of ONGC.