Russian Grandmasters Pavel Smirnov and Alexander Fominyh won their respective boards against top Indian players to emerge joint leaders after the fifth round of the Commonwealth Chess Championship at Mumbai on Wednesday.

The Russian players were sitting on 4.5 points apiece, half a point ahead of top seed Nigel Short of England, Dzhumaev Marat of Uzbekistan, Sergey Iskusnyh of Russia, Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh and five Indians -- Krishnan Sasikiran, Abhijit Kunte, Praveen Thipsay, Tejas Bakre and Sharad Tilak.

The day featured several exciting games in which the favourites came out triumph.

On the top board Grandmaster P Harikrishna went down fighting against Smirnov, who faced the Berlin defence.      The Indian had recently incorporated this opening in his game and obviously his lack of experience in the variation proved decisive in this duel.

Smirnov, rated 2609, was at his technical best in displaying the superiority of a slightly better pawn structure that was typical of the opening.

After routine exchanges, Harikrishna missed out on a simple combination in the final stages of the game and lost a pawn for nothing.

On the second board Fominyh defeated National Champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly who played black. Fominyh was right on top in the middle game after ensuring spatial advantage and romped home with some fine moves.

"He played really well right through," Ganguly said after the game.

Nigel Short, playing with white, showed his class yet again against former national Champion D V Prasad in Sicilian defence game.

The former World championship challenger employed a rarely played second move that took the Indian by surprise. The English player made the most of the advantage by forcing Prasad to resign.

International Masters from Maharashtra Chandrashekhar Gokhale and Sharad Tilak continued with their impressive run in the tournament.

Gokhale maintained his unbeaten run by agreeing for a quick draw with International Master Tahir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan while Tilak, having beaten Sriram Jha yesterday, defeated Women's Grandmaster S Vijayalakshmi in a keenly contested game.

Important results of Round 5 (Indian unless specified):

Smirnov Pavel (4.5; Rus) bt P Harikrishna (3.5); Fominyh Alexander (4.5, Rus) bt SS Ganguly (3); Nigel Short (4, Eng) bt DV Prasad (3); K S Sasikiran (4) bt Himanshu Sharma (3); Vakhidov Tahir (3.5, Uzb) drew with CS Gokhale (3.5); Rahul Shetty (3) lost to Abhijit Kunte (4); Viashal Sareen (3) lost to Dzhumaev Marat (4, Uzb); P Konguvel (3.5) drew with K Humpy (3.5); Praveen Thipsay (4) bt Somak Palit (3); Poobesh Anand (3) lost to Iskusnyk Sergev (4, Rus); Anup Deshmukh (3) lost to Tejas Bakre (4); S Vijayalakshmi (3) lost to Sharad Tilak (4); N Sudhakar Babu (3.5) dr ew with S Kidambi (3.5); Niaz Murshed (4, Ban) bt SR Mishra (3 ); RR Laxman (3.5) drew with Stuart Conquest (3; Eng); Feldman Vladimir (2.5; Aus) lost to Sandipan Chanda (3.5); RB Ramesh (3) drew with Nisha  Mohota (3); Lim Yee Weng (3, Mal) drew with Neelotpal Das (3); Jayant Gokhale (2.5) lost to George Michelakis (3.5, SAF); Nikhilesh Kumar (2.5) lost to Abhijit Gupta (3.5); MR Venkatesh (3.5) bt Prathamesh Mokal (2.5); MKA Russe ll (3, Sri) drew with Deepan Chakravarthy (3); Rakesh Ranjan (3) drew V Koshy (3); DK Sharma (3.5) bt Yogesh Gore (2.5); S Satyapragyan (3.5) bt BP Thipsay (2.5); N Vinuthana (3.5) bt GP Singh (2.5); TS Ravi (3) drew with Sai Mira (3); Deep Sengupta (3.5) bt Vikas Sharma (2.5); RG Hegde (3.5) bt K Priyadarshan (2.5).