India's Rahul Shetty and N K Mishra stunned two foreign Grandmasters to emerge joint leaders at the end of the fourth round in the Parsvnath International Chess tournament in Delhi on Saturday.
International Master Shetty shocked ninth seed Sergei Ovestivitij of Ukraine while IM Mishra got the better of 10th seed Marat Dhzumaev of Uzbekistan to book their places in the five member -- all Indians -- leading pack.
Youngest Commonwealth champion Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna, IM R B Ramesh and 13-year-old Abhijeet Gupta joined the duo in the lead, winning their respective encounters.
Indian Airlines' Shetty employed the Slav defence against his Ukranian opponent to garner full points from 36 moves, while Mishra, who works with TISCO in Jamshedpur chose the Dutch defence to emerge victorious in the same number of moves.
Meanwhile, Gupta foxed the experienced Lanka Ravi with an unorthodox Trompovsky attack to maintain his cent per cent win record.
Ravi, a Grandmaster norm holder and known for his preparation, was caught unaware by the kid from Rajashtan as he resigned after 43 moves.
On the top boards, Harikrishna defeated V Sarvanan while the winner of the Lucknow leg of the circuit, R B Ramesh, beat Anup Deshmukh.
Top seed GM Dmitry Svetushkin of Moldova defeated Akshay Raj Kore while British champion GM Abhijeet Kunte beat Sonak Palit to remain in the joint second spot with 14 others in the Rs 300,000 tournament with seven more rounds to go.
Meanwhile, GM Koneru Humpy had a happy outing today as she garnered full points by defeating Abhishek Das to remain just a point adrift from the leaders.
In other matches, WGM Nisha Mohota played a draw with eighth seed Alexander Gominyh of Russia while GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly defeated PDS Girinath.
Important fourth round results (All Indians if not
mentioned otherwise): V Saravanan 3.0 lost to P Harikrishna 4.0, S Ovestivitij (UKR) 3.0 lost to Rahul Shetty 4.0, N K Mishra 4.0 beat Marat Dzhumaev (UZB) 3.0, Anup Deshmukh 3.0 lost to R B Ramesh 4.0, Abhijeet Gupta 4.0 beat Lanka Ravi 3.0, Niaz Murshed (BAN) 3.5 drew Vishal Sareen 3.5, Prathmesh Mokal 3.5 drew Saifuddin (BAN) 3.5, D Svetushkin (MDA) 3.5 beat Akshayraj Kore 2.5, Jonathan Rowson (SCO) 3.5 beat G B Joshi 2.5, Somak Palit 2.5 lost to A Kunte 3.5, S S Ganguly 3.5 beat P D S Girinath 2.5, Atanu Lahiri 3.0 drew Tahir Vakhidov (UZB) 3.0, S Iuldashev (UZB) 3.5 beat K Ratnakaran 2.5, Nisha Mohota 3.0 drew A Fominyh (RUS) 3.0, Sriram Jha 3.5 beat Arghyadip Das 2.5, S Kidambi 3.0 drew Sayantan Dutta 3.0, Sudhakar Babu 3.0 drew K Gunasekaran 3.0, Syed Anwar Shazuli 3.5 beat Suvrajit Saha 2.5, Ram Prakash 2.5 lost to C S Gokhale 3.5, Vikas Sharma 3.0 drew S Poobesh Anand 3.0, P Konguvel 3.0 drew J S Gokhale 3.0.
