Parimarjan Negi was left to rue missed opportunities as he went down to second seed Grandmaster Valerij Neverov of Ukraine in the sixth round of the Masters section of Hastings International Chess Congress underway in England.
The loss left Negi with four points out of a possible six, which relegated him to joint ninth spot.
Top seed Grandmaster Vladimir Belov of Russia, Milos Pavlovic of Serbia and Neverov are the joint leaders with five points each.
They are followed by a pack of five players having 4.5 points apiece while Parimarjan is amongst the next set of 14 players.
Negi, who completed the formalities for becoming India's youngest International Master at this event, is still in contention for his maiden Grandmaster norm but the 12-year-old will have to score heavily in the remaining games to achieve the feat.
Four rounds remain at this 6000 Pounds Sterling tournament being played under FIDE's Swiss rules.
One of the other two Indians in the fray, World Under-10 champion Sahaj Grover scored his first victory in the event, accounting for James Macrae of Scotland.
Gurpreet Pal Singh suffered defeat at the hands of International Master Peter Marusenko of Ukraine.
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