Sasikiran held by Felgaer

Gibraltar, Jan 29 (PTI) Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiranmissed out on his chances and was held to a draw byArgentinean Grandmaster Ruben Felgaer in the fourth round ofTradewise Gibraltar chess tournament, while GM Deep Senguptasuffered his first defeat of the event here.

After a fantastic start, Sengupta was outplayed by ahighly regarded Nigel Short of England.

Sengupta, thus remained on 3 points out of a possiblefour and Short remained in joint lead along with NadezhdaKosintseva of Russia, who defeated Viktorija Cmilyte ofLithuania in her fourth round game.

With two leaders in the front, four players -- top seedVassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, Vasilios Kotronias of Greece,Daniel Fridman of Germany and young Grandmaster RichardRapport of Hungary -- share the third spot on 3.5 points eachin this 126000 Pounds Sterling tournament.

It turned out to be a mixed day for Indians as formerWorld Junior Champion P Harikrishna was also held to a draw byKaido Kulaots of Estonia.

After an unexpected loss at the hands of Nadezhda in theprevious round, GM Sandipan Chanda came back to his winningways and scored over Nezad Husein Aziz of Qatar.

G N Gopal also secured a victory over Mads Andersen ofDenmark and so did Vaibhav Suri, D Harika and Arghyadip Dasagainst lower-ranked opponents but Eesha Karavade was on thereceiving end against Vyacheslav Ikonnikov of Russia.

With six rounds still to go, Sasikiran, Harikrishna,Chanda, Sengupta and Gopal share the seventh spot with 22others while Harika, Suri and Das are in the next group of 2.5pointers.

Sasikiran was a bit unlucky not to covert a winningendgame in to a full point against Felgaer. Playing white, theIndian faced the Slav defence and even as it was a balancedmiddle game, Sasikiran pressed on to win a pawn afterregulation exchanges.

Sasikiran moved in the right direction for a long time.

However, with the clock ticking away in the final minutes ofthe game a blunder by Sasikiran helped Felgaer salvage a halfpoint. The game lasted 99 moves. .