Filipino grandmaster Oliver Barbosa and Maharashtra's Vidit Santosh Gujrathi led the field with seven points after the ninth round of the 6th Kolkata Open here Wednesday.
Four others are on 6.5 points in the 19th International Open GM Chess tournament.
Oliver and Russian Konstantin Landa (6) preferred to play the Tarrasch game. Landa went for a queen exchange as early as on the seventh move, but Oliver prevented his opponent's castling and won with the help of an outside passer pawn helped to get the verdict in his favour.
Both former age category world champions S.P. Sethraman of PSPB and Vidit fought fiercely in a Caro Kann defence, adopted by the latter. Vidit gained a valuable pawn on the 42nd move after several exchanges. With a win in the longest game of the tournament extending to 98 moves, Vidit surged ahead to the top.
Levan Pantsulaia of Georgia playing the Reti opening against former Asian Junior champion Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu overlooked a simple move, resulting in the loss of exchange on the 26th move.
When both had pinned minor pieces with their queens behind, Deepan released his pinned knight with a tactical rook move. Levan resigned, when he was about to lose his rook.
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Chances of getting a GM norm vanished for Diptayan Ghosh of the Alekhine Chess Club as he lost to Avetik Grigoryan of Armenia in a symmetrical English opening. One of the two extra pawns of Avetik was an outside passer, which was instrumental for Avetik to win the game.
Kolkata's grandmaster Deep Sengupta could not win using his extra pawns in the end game against top seed Nigel Short of England. The duel ended in a draw.
The Sicilian defence game between B. Adhiban of PSPB and Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh was full of tactics and both tried to outwit each other. The double-edged rook and two pawns ending had no other better result than a draw.
The tournament has produced three IM norms so far and the achievers are C.R.G. Krishna of AP, M. Kunal of TN and Abhishek Kelkar of Maharashtra.Results of important matches
Barbosa Oliver PHI 7 beat Landa Konstantin RUS 6
Adhiban B. IND 6.5 drew with Rahman Ziaur BAN 6.5
Sethuraman S.P. IND 6 lost to Vidit Santosh Gujrathi IND 7
Lalith Babu M.R. IND 6.5 drew with Kunte Abhijit IND 6.5
Short Nigel D. ENG 5.5 drew with Sengupta Deep IND 5.5
Abdulla Al-Rakib BAN 5.5 drew with Fedorchuk Sergey A. UKR 5.5
Arun Prasad S. IND 5.5 drew with Mchedlishvili Mikheil GEO 5.5
Pantsulaia Levan GEO 5 lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy J. IND 6
Grigoryan Avetik ARM 6 beat Ghosh Diptayan IND 5
Danielsen Henrik ISL 5.5 beat Karthikeyan P. IND 5
Padmini Rout IND 4.5 lost to Gopal G.N. IND 5.5
Kunal M. IND 5.5 beat Shyam Sundar M. IND 4.5
Prasanna R. Rao IND 5.5 beat Laxman R.R. IND 4.5
Swapnil S. Dhopade IND 5 drew with Swayams Mishra IND 5
Palit Somak IND 4.5 lost to Konguvel Ponnuswamy IND 5.5