Hari suffers fourth defeat, slumps to bottom in Crimea chess tourney

Crimea, Ukraine, June 27 (UNI) Former World Junior Champion P Harikrishna suffered yet another defeat losing to Alexei Shirov of Spain in the ninth round game and slumped to the bottom of the leaderboard in the Aerosvit International Grandmasters chess tournament here.

With this loss, his fourth in the tournament, the Indian now shares the bottom spot with Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine with three points in the field of 12 Grandmasters who are rated 2600 or higher ELO points.

There is no change in the first three positions of the leaderboard. Russian Sergey Rublevsky drew his game with Ukranian Alexander Areshchenko and retained the top spot with 6.5 points. At the second spot with six points is another Ukranian Vassily Ivanchuk, who drew with third placer Viktor Bologan of Macedonia.

Harikrishna played Morozevich Variation in the Slav Defence with black pieces, but Shirov's sacrifice of his knight on the 18th move proved to be the masterstroke which exposed Harikrishna's king. The Indian stayed in the game for a while by exchanging queens to prevent a direct attack, but had to resign to his more experienced opponent on the 38th move after losing another pawn.

With only two rounds left in the category 18 tournament, the Indian Grandmaster, who has so far registered only one win, is not expected to finish at the top half of the leaderboard.

In other matches, former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine beat compatriot Sergey Karjakin, while Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine crashed to his third consecutive defeat when he lost to Alexander Grischuk of Russia.

Harikrishna plays Ponomariov in the next round and Alexander Areshchenko (Ukraine) in the final round.

Round Nine Results: 1. Shakhriya Mamedyarov drew with Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu 2. Alexander Grischuk beat Andrei Volokitin 3. Vassily Ivanchuk drew with Viktor Bologan 4. Sergey Rublevsky drew with Alexander Areshchenko 5. Alexei Shirov beat P Harikrishna 6. Ruslan Ponomariov beat Sergey Karjakin UNI XC PDS DH KP1903