Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi drew with Iran’s Ehsan Ghaem Maghami to share the second spot half-a-point behind new leader Viorel Irodachescu after six rounds of the Dubai Open chess tournament in Dubai on Saturday.
Negi and eight others have five points. The pack includes Aleksej Aleksandrov (Belarus) who upstaged top seed Armenia’s Gabriel Sargissian. Irodachescu reached 5.5 points after beating Armenian Tigran Kotanjian.
Among the Indians, D. Harika, Abhishek Kelkar and S. Satyapragyan did well to prove equal to Grandmasters. Young Shiven Khosla held a struggling GM Arun Prasad. Three more rounds remain.
The results (sixth round, involving India):
Parimarjan Negi (5) drew with Ehsan Ghaem Maghami ((Iri, 5); Abhijeet Gupta (4) lost to Gadir Guseinov (Aze, 5); D. Harika (4) drew with Tamaz Gelshvilli (Geo, 4); Abhishek Kelkar (4) drew with Vadim Malakhatko (Bel, 4); Stanislav Savchenko (Ukr, 4) drew with S. Satyapragyan (4); Alexei Federov (Blr, 4) bt Padmini Rout (3); Shiven Khosla (3.5) drew with S. Arun Prasad (3); Martinez Josep Manuel Lopez (Esp, 3.5) drew with S. Meenakshi (3.5); Mitra Hejazipour (Iri, 3) lost to M. R. Lalith Babu (4); Shayesteh Ghader Pour (Iri, 3.5) drew with R. R. Laxman (3.5); Gevorg Hartujunyan (Arm, 4) bt Tejas Ravichandran (3); Antonio Viani D’cunha (3)lost to Sami Khader (Jor, 4); Romany Salah (Egy, 3) lost to M. Shyam Sundar (4); Samer Mehdi (Iri, 3) lost to Eesha Karavade (4); Khalil Al-Housa (Ple, 3) lost to Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3); M. R. Venkatesh (3.5) bt Marina Makropoulou (Gre, 2.5); Mohammadreza Afshari (Iri, 3.5) bt Sahaj Grover (2.5); Chinmay Kulkarni (3) drew with Vinod Bhagwat (3); P. I. Johny (3) drew with Myroslava Hrabinska (Ukr, 2.5); Mohammad Hayel Rafee (Egy, 2) lost to Karma Pandya (3); Manjunath Jain (2) lost to Khaled Mona (Egy, 3); M. Vigram (2) lost to Rocky Pabalan (Phi, 3); Robert Arellano (Phi, 1.5) lost to Surya Sudarshan (3); Elsaca Daniel Yarur (Chi, 2) bt M. Priyadarshini (1); N. Madhuri (0.5) lost to Adulla Abdulaziz (UAE, 1.5).
