Sasikiran held to a draw

Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran was held to a draw by Zoltan Almasi of Hungary while 74-year-old GM Viktor Korchnoi of Switzerland overpowered his much younger opponent to take sole lead after the third round of Marx Gyorgy memorial Grandmasters chess tournament in Paks, Hungary.

Not mellowed a wee-bit by the age factor, Korchnoi demonstrated fine skills to beat GM Ferenc Berkes of Hungary to emerge as the sole leader with 2.5 points in this category-15 double round robin event between 6 players.

Top seed Emil Sutovsky of Israel, who drew with Hungarian GM Peter Acs, and Almasi are close behind the leader with 2 points apiece while Sasikiran and Acs are next in line with 1 point each. Berkes with just half a point, is at the bottom of the tables with 7 rounds still remaining in the tournament.

It turned out to be an average day for Sasikiran who played the white side of a Nimzo Indian defence. Seeded second here, the Indian will now have to quickly score some points to retain any chances of being a frontrunner in the second half of the tournament.

Almasi is the third best Hungarian player behind Peter Leko and Judit Polgar and he lived up to his reputation by holding Sasikiran quite easily.

Capablanca variation was the preferred choice of Sasikiran and he could only get a miniscule advantage typical of the opening. Almasi exchanged the pieces almost at will to arrive at a queen and minor pieces endgame wherein Sasikiran's Bishops were not as effective as he would have liked them to be. Another trading of piece led to a balanced endgame and the draw was agreed to in 30 moves.