He joins five Grandmasters -- Namelyubilava, Kuzmin, Barbero, Cifuentes Parada and Conquest -- on top of the table with just a round to go in this tournament. Playing with white, Sasikiran employed the Torre Attack and gained an advantage in the middlegame due to some listless play by his opponent.

Ranola allowed Sasikiran's rook to enter the seventh rank and was forced to part with two pieces for the menacing rook. In the endgame, with two rooks against Sasikiran's two knights and a rook, Ranola played poorly, not exploiting Sasikiran's mistakes and finally resigned on the 62nd move.

Yugoslavian Grandmaster Milos Pavlovic caught P Konguvel(5.5) in his home preparation and won in just 17 moves. Playing the Petroff Defence with black pieces, Konguvel was forced to part with his queen which got trapped.

RoktimBandyopadhyay (6), Neelotpal Das (5.5) and Rahul Shetty scored smooth wins over Henrique Galvao, Rosell Formosa and Pes Mateo Angel respectively to maintain their decent scores. V Saravanan (5) lost his second successive game against Lars Hansen of Denmark to bow out of the race for a place in the prize list.

Other results: GM Granda Zuniga (6) lost to GM Barbero (7), GM Ubilava (7) drew GM Kuzmin (7), iM Al Modiahki (6) lost to GM Cifuentes (7), GM Conquest (7) bt WGM Peng Zhaoqin (6), GM M Apicella (6) bt Sandipan Chanda (5).