Harikrishna, Sasikiran share lead

Grandmaster P Harikrishna continued his superb form with white pieces beating top seed Zhang Zhong of China in the eighth and penultimate round of the Premier tournament of the Hastings International Chess Congress as he and compatriot GM K Sasikiran remained in joint lead.

Sasikiran scored an easy victory over tailender International Master Irina Krush of United States. The two Indians have six points each from eight games.

The only player within striking distance of Sasikiran and Harikrishna is GM Alexei Barsov of Uzbekistan who scored another fine victory over GM Joe Gallagher of Switzerland. Barsov has 5.5 points and is a clear one point ahead of GM Mark Hebden of England who is playing in his best form after a dismal start.

The last round pairings have some very interesting games lined up. Harikrishna plays Hebden with black pieces, Sasikiran has black against Zhong while Barsov will take on Irina with black.

For the second round in succession, there were four decisive games and the only draw was played between GMs Petr Kiriakov of Russia and Peter Wells of England.

Zhong's hopes of justifying his top billing were extinguished by Harikrishna in masterly fashion. Playing white, Harikrishna opened with the queen pawn and sprang a little surprise on his second move itself as he pushed the king pawn, showing his desire for a French defence, an opening he has played many times with black pieces.

The Chinese player went in for an off-beat double fianchetto defence and Harikrishna got a slightly better position with timely manoeuvering of his pieces to right squares. Black was lured into overextending his centre in the early middlegame.

It was a excellent tactical stroke by Harikrishna as he put his knight to invade the opposition territory on the eighth move and won an exchange by force.

Harikrishna picked his way through the remaining complications easily and won in 41 moves to complete his 4/4 sweep with white pieces.

All his draws have come from black pieces here and his performance rating so far in the tournament is a staggering 2716, something which would certainly send alarms in the elite chess circles.

Joint leader Sasikiran was not far behind crushing Krush with white pieces. Krush's play in the endgames seems to have been her Achilles heel in this tournament and her opponents have been quick to exploit this weakness.

Cashing in on the opportunity, Sasikiran chose a line favoured by GM Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the Braingames match against Gary Kasparov.

Having played a few games in the set up, Sasikiran was certainly more familiar with the intricacies of the queen less middle game and the exchange of pieces at regular intervals did not deter him to strive for advantage.

The game was down to a bishop versus knight endgame where Irina's knight was found struggling for space. Sasikiran penetrated the queen side with his king and Irina's pawns fell like nine pins and the game was over in 51 moves.

Earlier reports:
Sasikiran joins Harikrishna in lead
Harikrishna takes sole lead
Harikrishna draws but retains lead
Harikrishna emerges sole leader
Harikrishna leads at Hastings
Sasikiran seeded No. 2 at Hastings