Ponomariov, Grischuk score

On a day dominated by black pieces, only Russian Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk could capitalise on the advantage of playing with white, defeating American Gata Kamsky in the first game of the Round Four at the World Chess Cup Khanty Mansyisk, Russia.

All the Indian players have already made an exit from the tournament. While Surya Shekhar Ganguly and K Sasikiran were ousted in Round Two, Grandmaster P Harikrishna bowed out in a third round tiebreaker against Russian Alexey Dreev.

With black, former World champion Ruslan Ponomariov from Ukraine beat his one-time assistant, Loek Van Wely from the Netherlands.

On the other boards, Joel Lautier somehow managed to equalise against Etienne Bacrot. Konstantin Sakaev, making one blunder after another, lost to Sergei Rublevsky, while the youngest Grandmaster left in the fray, Magnus Carlsen, agreed for a draw against Evgeny Bareev when the moves look favourable to black.

Round 4 game 1 results:

Bareev drew with Carlsen ½-½ Bacrot -drew with Lautier½-½ Vallejo drew with Aronian ½-½ Grischuk beat Kamsky 1-0 Dreev - drew with Gelfand ½-½ Gurevich -drew with Malakhov ½-½ Sakaev lost to Rublevsky 0-1 Van Wely lost to Ponomariov 0-1.