On what turned out to be an excellent day for players with black pieces, Grandmasters Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus, Marat Dzhumaev from Uzbekistan and M R Lalith Babu made merry on the top boards and jumped to joint second spot.
With Suri on six points from seven matches, the three pursuers are on their heels a half point behind and the coming rounds promise excitement for the chess buffs.
Suri's victory with black was possible after Chandran went haywire with his plans from what looked like an approximately equal endgame.
The Delhi boy, however, took the victory as it came with black pieces and is now in serious contention for the biggest victory of his career.
A wolf-pack of eight players is on five points. They are Lu Shanglei from China, Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh, Henrik Teske from Germany, Kiril Kuderinov of Kazakhstan, Jahongir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan and Indians Chandra, Sahaj Grover and Murali Karthikeyan.
Aleksandrov won at the expense of Hungarian Grandmaster Czebe Attila in a long drawn endgame. Showing precise technique, he pocketed a pawn and gave no chances thereafter.
Swapnil Dhopade was in contention for a long time but missed out on chances to equalise against Dzhumaev.
The Uzbek GM won an exchange and showed his technical prowess to clinch the issue.
Lalith had a difficult game to defend against Ankit Rajpara, who in fact blundered and landed in a lost endgame.
Murali Karthikeyan kept himself in quest for a GM norm after drawing with V Vishnu Prasanna. The 13-year old will next meet Chandran.
Top seed Abhijeet Gupta made a recovery of sorts defeating Anurag Mahamal in a one-sided affair. Gupta took his tally to 4.5 points after the victory.
