Sasikiran makes progress in chess festival

Gibraltar:

Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran turned the tables on Scotland's International Master John Shaw to move into joint fifth spot after the fourth round of the Master's section of the Gibtele.com chess festival. With this win, Sasikiran has taken his points tally to three from the possible four and shares the spot with top seed and hot favourite Alexei Shirov of Spain, and third seed Emil Sutovsky of Israel and 13 others. Four players, Kiril Georgiev of Bulgaria, Boris Avrukh of Israel and Armenian duo of Gabriel Sargissen and former World junior champion Levon Aronian continued to share the lead. Sasikiran was just lucky against Shaw who has been playing in terrific form here. Having drawn against Shirov in the first round itself, Shaw confidently took on Sasikiran's off-beat Sicilian defence and a routine deployment of forces ensured a dangerous attack for him. Sasikiran, however, hung in there finding defensive moves in a difficult position, mainly caused by his uncomfortable kingside. As Shaw unleashed his final attack he missed a simple rook manoeuvre that proved his piece sacrifice wrong. The Indian won in 29 moves. (PTI)