IANS

Kolkata, Sep 6: Indian Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda continued in the pole position but his all-win record was broken as he drew with Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem in the fifth round of the 4th Kolkata Open Grandmaster Chess tournament here Saturday.

Chanda (4.5) let Liem (4) off the hook to split point on the first board at Gorky Sadan.

Sandipan had a better game but made a slight error in the endgame to let his Vitnamese opponent, who had defeated top ranked Azerbaijan GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov Friday, off the hook.

Ten players are in the second position with four points each.

On the second board, GM Enamul Hossain (4) of Bangladesh played solidly with the white pieces to force a draw against Azerbaijan's Eltaj Safarli in 53 moves of a Sicilian defence game. Eltaj had some counter play and even won a pawn but the game eventually fizzled out into a theoretically drawn endgame.

Second ranked Super GM Nigel Short (4) of Britain also tried hard to penetrate the Caro-Kann defence of Israeli GM Evgeny Postny (4) but could not make any headway and the point was split after 55 moves.

Young FIDE Master Vidit Gujrathi (3.5) accounted for his second GM of the tournament. He defeated Tiger Hillarp Perssson of Sweden and is on course for his sixth IM norm.

Indian GM Magesh Chandran (4) won against super GM Gadir Guseino (3) of Azerbaijan in what could be termed a minor upset on the top boards. Magesh opened with his queen pawn and soon had a bind on the centre. He then won an exchange and used his passed pawn to win another rook after which it was all over.

GM Viktor Laznicka (4) of the Czech Republic played another solid game to emerge victorious against GM Rustam Khusnutdinov (3) of Kazakhstan in 47 moves. The Kazakh GM allowed Laznicka the advantage of the double bishops early in the game and then played weakly in the endgame to lose a few pawns. GM Parimarjan Negi (4) defeated IM Deep Sengupta (3) and is now lurking in the joint second place. Negi normally is a strong finisher.