Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran was held to an easy draw by Eltaj Safarli of Azerbaijan in the seventh round of the ‘A' group of Aeroflot international open chess tournament here.
Sasikiran took his tally to four points after the draw and will need a good finish now in order to save important rating points.
Vidit Gujrathi kept himself in contention for his final Grandmaster norm settling for a quick and easy draw with Ivan Salgado Lopez of Spain.
Having played high opposition here, Gujrathi can make the norm if he scores one point in the last two games but for that he will have to face similar opposition.
Meanwhile at the top, Anton Korobov of Ukraine finally met his nemesis in Pavel Eljanov of Ukraine who now shares the lead with Mateusz Bartel of Poland on 5.5 points. Incidentally, these two have ended Indian aspirations for a podium finish defeating Abhijeet Gupta and Sasikiran in the previous round.
Amongst other Indians in the fray in the seventh round, S.P. Sethuraman played out a draw with Abhijeet while B. Adhiban achieved the same result against Alexander Ipatov of Russia.
Abhijeet was suffering the endgame when Sethuraman simply missed a three-fold repetition and walked into it.
Sandipan Chanda and G.N. Gopal lost to Karen Grigoryan of Armenia and Francisco Vallejo Pons of Spain respectively and a good result was obtained by Shyam Sundar, who got the better for Boris Savchenko of Russia. In the ‘B' group being organised simultaneously, GM norm aspirants Vaibhav Suri and P. Shyam Nikil also suffered setbacks and lost. In the remaining two games now, both need to do exceptionally well to get their final norm.
Aravindh Chithambaram lost in the ‘C' group and then let go of the lead when he was held to a draw in the eighth round by Eduard Barsamian of Russia. With just one round remaining here, Chithambaram needs a victory for a podium finish.
