Thus, Sasikiran has taken his points tally to 11. His closest rival Kunte (9.5) has been joined at the second spot by RB Ramesh (9.5), who played a draw today. All the three have confirmed their place among the top six -- which would form the Indian team for the various international events.

GM Pravin Thipsay and G B Prakash (9 each), D V Prasad (8), P Konguvel and V Saravanan (7.5 each) and Neelotpal Das (7) are also in the fray for the remaining three places.

IM-norm holder Anup Deshmukh's queen pawn opening was tackled with the kings Indian set-up. Fearless Sasi offered a pawn, but Deshmukh rejected the bid, only to find his rival improving his position move by move. The ONGC IM repeated his rook moves twice just to impressDeshmukh that he (Sasi) was playing for a draw. Deshmukh fell in the trap when he planned to break open Sasi's castled position, but ended in working out a unclear piece sacrifice. Sasikiran mounted further pressure, shattered Deshmukh's designs and forced him to resign on the 45th move.

Kunte's queen pawn opening was met by Das' Slav structure. Kunte's aggression was clear as he played some brilliant moves initially. Das applied equally forceful tactics despite being under time pressure. In a bid to bag the full point, Kunte avoided exchange of queens and that gave Das a chance to win the game on the 57th move.

Shankar Roy (white) and GM Thipsay played a Scotch gambit. After early exchange of queens, the pawn structure got fractured by the 16th move. The GM had doubled pawns in c-file and Roy had a weak pawn on e3. Roy kept on exchanging pieces and even lost his weak e pawn. The game entered into a rook and pawn ending with Thipsay having two extra pawns. The game was drawn on the 79th move.

The Slavdefence game between GB Prakash (white) and SK Rathore ended in favour of the former. On the 10th move, Rathore lost his tempo allowing Prakash a free hand. DV Prasad was benefitted by IM Verghese Koshy's weakness on black squares.

P Konguvel (white) and S Saha's centre counter game saw the former lose on the 39th move. V Saravanan (white) outwitted T S Ravi in the Ruy Lopez game. R G Hegde and Tejas Bakre shared the point, while R B Ramesh and N K Mishra played a quick 10-move draw.

Results of 14th round: A Deshmukh (5) lost to Sasikiran (11), A Kunte (9.5) lost to N Das (7), N K Mishra (5.5) drew with R B Ramesh (9.5), S Roy (4.5) drew with P Thipsay (9), Prakash (9) bt Rathore (4), Konguvel (7.5) lost to S Saha (6.5), Prasad (8) bt V Koshy (5), V Sarnanan (7.5) bt T S Ravi (6.5), R G Hegde drew with Tejas Bakre (5.5).

Pairings of 15th round:Thipsay-Mishra, Rathore-Roy, Bakre-G B Prakash, Verghese-Hegde, Sasikiran-Prasad, Saha-Deshmukh, Ravi-Konguvel, Das-Saravanan,Ramesh-Kunte.