Kazakh Grandmaster Petr Kostenko downed Parimarjan Negi in the seventh round of the 7th Parsvnath International Chess Tournament to maintain his lead with seven points. Kostenko overcame Negis challenge in 53 moves. Kostenko now leads a pack of ten players,including Surya Sekhar Ganguly,Abhijit Kunte and Dibeyendu Barua adrift a full point. The upsets continued on Friday with Praveen Thipsay losing his game against young Vishnu Prasanna while Shashikant Kutwal stunned his favoured Uzbek opponent Grandmaster Safin Shukhrat. Seventh round results: GM Parimarjan Negi (5.5) lost to GM Petr Kostenko (7) ; IM S P Sethuraman (6) drew with GM Mikhail Ulibin(6) ; IM Roktim Bandyopadhyay (6) drew with IM P Karthikeyan (6) ; IM Deep Sengupta (5) lost to GM SS Ganguly (6) ; GM Abhijit Kunte (6) beat IM Shyam Sundar (5) ; IM Sriram Jha (5.5) drew with GM Saidali Iuldachev (5.5) ; GM Safin Shukhrat of lost to Shashikant Kutwal (6) ; GM Dibyendu Barua (6) beat Matta Vinay Kumar (5) ; IM GB Prakash (5.5) drew with GM Neelotpal Das (5.5) ; Vinoth Kumar (5) lost to IM RR Laxman (6) ; GM Praveen Thipsay (5) lost to Vishnu Prasanna (6) ; GM Alexander Areshchenko (5.5) beat FM Nitin S (4.5) ; GM Yuriy Kuzubov (5.5) beat IM Neeraj Kumar Mishra (4.5) GM Anuar Ismagambetov of Kazakhstan (5) drew with IM Sudhakar Babu (5).
