Third seed Parimarjan Negi overpowered fellow Grandmaster Hrant Melkumyan of Armenia to join five others in the lead at 4.5 points after five rounds of $45,000 Dubai Open chess tournament in Dubai on Saturday.
Negi's resounding victory with black pieces over Melkumyan, rated 2582, put him on par with Tigran Kotanjian (Armenia), Viorel Iordachescu (Moldova), Eduardo Iturrizaga (Venezuela), Ehsan Ghaem
Maghami (Iran) and Tornike Sanikidze (Georgia).
On a day when most leading Indians lost, GM Abhijeet Gupta defeated compatriot Eesha Karavade in 76 moves to reach four points.
The results (fifth round, involving Indians): Hrant Meklumyan (Arm, 3.5) lost to Parimarjan Negi (4.5); Eduardo Iturrizaga (Ven, 4.5) bt D. Harika (3.5); M. R. Lalith Babu (3) lost to Sergey Volkov (Rus, 4); R. R. Laxman (3) lost to Eltaj Safarli (Aze, 4); S. Satyapragyan (3.5) drew with Merab Gaganashvili (Geo, 3.5); Eesha Karavade (3) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (4); Csaba Balogh (Hun, 3.5) bt Tejas Ravichandran (3); Martinez Julen Luis Arizmendi (Esp, 3.5) bt Chinmay Kulkarni (2.5).
Jasem Alhuwar (UAE, 3.5) bt M. R. Venkatesh (2.5); Sahaj Grover (2.5) lost to Abhishek Kelkar (3.5); M. Shyam Sundar (3) drew with Shayesteh Ghader Pour (Iri, 3); Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3) bt Noaman Omar (UAE, 2.5); S. Arun Prasad (3) bt Moustafa Tawfeik (Egy, 2); Karma Pandya (2) lost to Saleh Salem (UAE, 3); Subbaraman Meenakshi (3) bt James Coleman (Eng, 2).
Khaled Mona (Egy, 2) lost to Padmini Rout (3); Shiven Khosla (3) bt Antonio Molina (Phi, 2); Vinod Bhagwat (2.5) drew with P.I. Johny (2.5); Antonio Viani D'cunha (3) bt Shohreh Bayat (Iri, 2); Surya Sudarshan (2) lost to John Bennett (Eng, 3); M. Priyadarshini (1) lost to Manjunath Jain (2); Abdulaziz Ali (UAE, 1) lost to M. Vigran (2); Aysha Jehad (UAE, 0.5) drew with N. Madhuri (0.5).
