Indian trio of B Adhiban, S P Sethuraman and M R Lalith Babu and Russia's Konstantin Landa posted fine wins to join four overnight leaders for an eight-way lead with two rounds remaining in the sixth Kolkata Open Chess Tournament here today.
Four overnight leaders -- Abhijit Kunte, Vidit Gujrathi, Oliver Barbosa of Philippines and Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh -- drew their respective games as eight players shared the lead with six points apiece for an exciting finish to the tournament.
Adhiban, playing black, started with Sicilian defence against Deepan Chakkaravarthy of Tamil Nadu and the game went on smoothly until move 34, when Adhiban offered a knight sacrifice.
When Deepan accepted the temptation, it was curtains for him, as it enabled Adhiban to control the central open files.
Deepan's king was exposed without any support by his major pieces and he resigned after five more moves.
Former Commonwealth champion Lalith Babu chose to play Nimzo Indian defence against local hopes GM Deep Sengupta.
Deep sacrificed his bishop on 20th move to break open his opponent's castle. It was the turn of Lalith to sacrifice his rook on 43rd move to quell the challenge of Deep and win comfortably.
S P Sethuraman displayed a fine end game technique against Georgia's Mikheil Mchedlishvili in a Closed Catalan game as the latter was forced to give up his dynamic dark coloured bishop.
Sethuraman made a pseudo sacrifice of his rook to seal the issue.
Grigoryan Avetik of Armenia played a good King's Indian defence against the Russian Landa.
Both sacrificed minor pieces, but Landa managed to win exchange and his rook virtually won the game.
With a win in the eighth round, over his state mate GM Neelotpal Das, Diptayan Ghosh enhanced his chances of a GM norm as he needed a win against Avetik Grigoryan in the ninth and penultimate round tomorrow.
