Grandmaster Ahmed Adly of Egypt defeated giant-killer Ram S Krishnan in the second board to be in joint lead with Karthikeyan with 6.5 points.
They were followed by top seed Sergei Tiviakov (The Netherlands), Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukraine), Alexander Fominyh (Rus), M R Venkatesh, M R Lalith Babu, M Shyam Sundar, K Rathnakaran, G Akash, Kathmale Sameer (all India) at six points.
While the top board game between Lalith Babu and Sergei Tiviakov was a relatively quiet draw, in the upset of the day, Chennai based International Master P Karthikeyan brought down Grandmaster SP Sethuraman.
The Slav game saw Sethuraman sacrificing a pawn and going for the initiative. Karthikeyan gave his rook for bishop and kept his chances going. Sethurman pressed for the win and missed out on tactics as white's queen, knight and bishop battery decided the issue in favour of Karthikeyan.
With two Grandmaster Norms to his credit Karthikeyan should now be eyeing to complete his GM title in his home town Chennai.
Round 7 Results (Indians unless specified):
M R Lalith Babu 6 drew with Sergei Tiviakov (Ned) 6, Adly Ahmed (Egy) 6.5 bt Ram S Krishnan 5.5, M R Venkatesh 6 drew with Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukr) 6, P Karthikeyan 6.5 bt SP Sethuraman 5, Lintchevski Daniil (Rus) 5.5 drew with Tania Sachdev 5.5, Mark Paragua (Phi) 5.5 drew with CRG Krishna 5.5, S Nitin 5.5 drew with Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) 5.5, R Siddharth 5.5 drew with Sahaj Grover 5.5, Nisha Mohota 5 lost to M Shyam Sundar 6, Karthikeyan Murali 5 lost to Alexander Fominyh (Rus) 6, K Rathnakaran 6 bt Sayantan Das 5, Ikeda Junta (Aus) 5.5 bt J Deepan Chakkravarthy 4.5, Rolando Nolte (Phi) 5.5 bt Prince Bajaj 4.5, Sowmya Swaminathan 4.5 lost to Narayanan Srinath.