Grandmaster and National champion Abhijeet Gupta played out an easy draw with higher seed Francisco Vallejo Pons of Spain to remain in the leading group after the end of the third round in Group A of the Aeroflot International chess tournament here.
After two back-to-back victories, Abhijeet stood much better after the opening against Vallejo but an inaccuracy in the queen-less middle game cost him dear as Vallejo equalized easily.
Abhijeet took his tally to 2.5 points out of a possible three on a draw-marred day that had just one decisive result in the top 10 boards. The beneficiary was second seed Fabiano Caruana of Italy who defeated Eduardo Iturrizaga of Venezuela.
With six rounds still to come in one of the strongest open of the world, it's an eight-way tie at the top of the tables and Abhijeet is the sole Indian amongst them.
Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu of Romania held K. Sasikiran to a draw while Parimarjan Negi played it safe and signed peace with Vadim Zvjaginsev of Russia.
Lower down, B Adhiban spoilt his chances and went down to Safarli Eltaz of Azerbaijan but Sandipan Chanda made most of the opportunities to coast to his first victory at the expense of Jorge Cori of Peru.
Achiving good results were S.P. Sethuraman and M.R. Venkatesh. With white, Sethuraman defeated higher ranked Gadir Guseinov of Azerbaijan while Venkatesh remained in the hunt for his final Grandmaster norm after holding Zhao Jianchao of China to a draw.
G.N. Gopal succumbed to his third straight loss in the tournament at the hands of Boris Savchenko of Russia.
Indian results: Group ‘B': Victor Mikhalevski (Isr, 2.5) drew with Vaibhav Suri (2.5); Nikita Matinian (Rus, 2.5) drew with Tejas Bakre (2.5); Vitaly Sivuk (Ukr, 3) bt Ivana Maria Furtado (2); Alexey Kislinsky (Cze, 2) drew with Akshayraj Kore (2.5); Mikhail Antipov (Rus, 2.5) bt S Arun Prasad (1.5); M R Lalith Babu (2.5) bt Debashis Das (1.5); Eduard Kanter (Rus, 2) drew with P Shyam Nikil (2); S. Kidambi (2.5) bt Firat Burak (Tur, 1.5); Mary Ann Gomes (2) drew with Nguyen Van Huy (Vie, 2); Evgenik Kalegin (Rus, 2) drew with Ankit Rajpara (2); S Nitin (1.5) drew with Vitaly Kunin (Ger, 1.5); Sahaj Grover (2) bt Vasilij Gagarin (Rus, 1); Deepan Chakkravarthy (2) bt Alexander Filipenko (Rus, 1); Nisha Mohota (1.5) drew with Sergey Pavlov (Ukr, 1.5); Shamil Arslanov (Rus, 2) bt B Pratyusha (1); Artashes Minasian (Arm, 2) bt Diptayan Ghosh (1); Anuar Ismagambetov (Kaz, 1) drew with Eesha Karavade (1); S L Narayanan (0.5) lost to Oleg Gladyszev (Rus, 1.5); Soumya Swaminathan (1) drew with Zurab Javakhadze (Geo, 1); Shardul Gagare (1) drew with Huang Qian (1); Swayams Mishra (1.5) bt Vasiliy Korchmar (Rus, 0.5);Maria Severina (Rus, 0.5) lost to Padmini Rout (1.5).
Group ‘C': Konstantin Bronnikov (Rus, 2.5) drew with Akash Iyer (2.5); Vasily Vasilyev (Rus, 2) lost to Aravindh Chithambaram (3); Samdan Samdanov (Rus, 2) lost to R Bharathi (3); P.V. Nandhidhaa (2) drew with Artur Gharagyozian (Arm, 2); Eduard Barsamian (Rus, 2) drew with K G Chaithanyaa (2); Victor Plotkin (Can, 2.5) bt Michelle Catherina (1.5); Niklesh Jain (2.5) bt Sead Kozarcanin (Cro, 1.5); M Mahalakshmi (1) lost to Bhakti Kulkarni (2); Srija Seshadri (2) bt Enkhtuul Altanulzii (Mgl, 1); Vladimir Ivenin (Rus, 1.5) drew with Meenu Priya (1.5); Tagir Taalaibekov (Kgz, 2) bt R Ganesh (1); Mohammad Reza Nejadshirazi (Iri, 1) lost to U Ashwini (2); Madhurima Shekhar (1.5) bt Vitaly Ezhikov (Rus, 0.5); Faham Faridi (Iri, 1) drew with Harshal Shahi (1); G Lasya (1.5) beat Anshuman Singh (0.5).
