Grandmaster Koneru Humpy's nightmare continued as she went down to R Balasubramaniam of Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, in the sixth round of the Parsvnath international chess tournament in Delhi on Monday.
The Asian women's champion, playing with white pieces, blundered on the 31st move to let go a winning position and finally surrendering in 79 moves.
This was Humpy's second defeat in the Rs 300,000 prize-money tournament. She had earlier lost to C Praveen Kumar of Tamil Nadu in the second round.
Another Grandmaster, Marat Dhzumaev, was also forced to bite the dust by IM Varughese Koshy.
Koshy, choosing to play the Dutch opening, finally took a full point after 100 moves.
Overnight leaders Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna and GM norm holder R B Ramesh played a quick draw to remain in joint lead with 5.5 points.
On top boards, top seed GM Dmitry Svetushkin drew with Sriram Jha, GM Jonathan Rowson drew with Vishal Sareen and British champion Abhijeet Kunte also settled for a quick draw with GM Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh in just 10 moves.
While one Grandmaster lost, luck smiled on the other.
Facing defeat after some excellent middle game play of Chennai-based K Visweswaran, Russian Alexander Fominyh eked out a lucky victory, to move into second place with 5.0 points.
Important sixth round results (All Indians if not mentioned otherwise):
R B Ramesh 5.5 drew P Harikrishna 5.5, Svetushkin (MDA) 5.0 drew Sriram Jha 5.0, Jonathan Rowson
(SCO) 5.0 drew Vishal Sareen 5.0, Niaz Murshed (BAN) 5.0 drew Abhijit Kunte 4.5, N K Mishra 4.5 drew Tahir Vakhidov (UZB) 4.5, S Iuldachev (UZB) 5.0 beat Nassir Wajih 4.0, K Visweswaran 4.0 lost to Alexander Fominyh (RUS) 5.0, Koneru Humpy 4.0 lost to R Balasubramanium 5.0, Himanshu Sharma 4.5 drew Lanka Ravi 4.5, P Konguvel 5.0 beat Is hmeet Singh 4.0, S Kidambi 5.0 beat Rishipal Singh 4.0, Anup De shmukh 4.0 lost to Neelotpal Das 5.0, Sayantan Dutta 4.5 drew C S Gokhale 4.5.
