Negi holds Leim in exciting game

Moscow: Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi worked his way to an exciting draw with higher seeded Le Quang Leim of Vietnam in the fourth round of the `A` group of Aeroflot International chess tournament here.

Playing white, Negi was up against a French defense and appeared to be in some difficulties in the middle game, but handled the pressure well. The Indian eventually sacrificed material to open up Leim`s King side and forced the draw through perpetual checks and inched himself to 2.5 points. National champion Abhijeet Gupta kept himself in contention after settling for a fighting draw with Csaba Balogh of Hungary. Abhijeet however slipped to the joint second spot after the draw as Anton Korobov of Russia emerged as the new leader on 3.5 points. Abhijeet shares the second spot with ten others with five rounds still to come in one of the strongest open tournament of the world. B Adhiban caused another upset in the tournament. On the receiving end was Rauf Mamedov of Azerbaijan who could not handle the tactical complications correctly. The other higher ranked Indians in the fray, Krishnan Sasikiran, Sandipan Chanda and S P Sethuraman played out draws to move to 2.5 points. Vidit Gujrathi raised visions of his final Grandmaster norm defeating Gadir Guseinov of Azerbaijan. Given the tough field he is up against, Gujrathi has done quite well notching two points thus far. In `B` group being held simultaneously, highest rated Indian International Master Sahaj Grover found his winning touch against Mikhail Antipov of Russia. Going for late tactics, Grover was in his element in this one sided affair and moved to three points from four rounds. Also on three points in this section are Tejas Bakre, Vaibhav Suri, M R Lalith Babu and S Kidambi who all played out draws in the fourth round. Can Emre of Turkey and Russian Sergey Grishchenko share the lead in this section. PTI