Indian GM Abhijeet Gupta missed out on a chance to clinch a win as he had to settled for a draw with Iran GM Idani Pouya in the third round of Dubai International Open Chess Tournament, here today.
Playing with white pieces, GM Gupta enjoyed a certain advantage in the middle game that ensued and even got one opportunity when the whole point was up for grabs.
However, the Indian missed and Idani, himself a former U-18 World Champion, did not give Gupta a second chance to create an opening.
Up against higher opposition, the Indians had a mediocre day in the third round.
GM Sahaj Grover's opening preparation in the Benoni defence came out fine but he missed his chances in the middle game to equalise and went down to second seed Vladimir Fedoseev of Russia.
Sergei Zhigalko from Belarus also made most of his white pieces like Fedoseev as he scored over talented Indian GM Murali Karthikeyan while the big winners of previous round - Abhishek Kelkar and NR Vignesh went down fighting against Papp Gabor of Hungary and Mikheil Mchedlishvili of Georgia respectively.
Looking for his second GM norm, Sagar Shah also ended on the receiving end against Nils Grandelius of Sweden.
With six rounds still to come in the USD 50,000 Prize money tournament that has USD 12,000 purse for the winner, as many as 12 players including top seed David Howell of England share the lead with three points apiece from as many games.
There are no Indians in the leading pack currently and the likes of Gupta, Grover and Karthikeyan will have to do the hard catch-up job in the next few rounds.
LN Ram Arvind produced the upset of the round when he put it across GM Sergei Beshukov of Russia. Arvind's second victory in the tournament took him to two points from his three games thus far.
Among other Indians in the fray, Grandmaster S Arun Prasad, IM S Vijayalakshni, Sameer Kathmale and Aniruddha Deshpandey made amends for the previous round and reached two points each.
The next round will also see some tough clashes for the Indians in the fray here. Gupta is set to meet an experienced Alexander Shabalov of United States while Grover too has a tough opponent in compatriot Mehar Chenna Reddy.
