Bikaner, April 21: Grandmaster Alexander Baburin today put a halt to IM R B Ramesh's run at the Commonwealth chess championship when the second seeded Irishman beat the hitherto unbeaten Indian in the sixth round here.The result allowed Baburin to catch-up with the over-night sole leader Ramesh and from the other board promising Indian Atanu Lahiri also joined them to throw the 6th edition of the tournament wide open.Ramesh with five points from five wins and a loss, shares lead with Baburin and Lahiri, who scored a comfortable victory over IWM Bhagyashree Sathe.Indian GMS Dibyendu Barua and Pravin Thipsay and IM D V Prasad moved up to second position after having garnered 4.5 points each.Baburin with black pieces played the Alekhine defence to Ramesh's King pawn opening. The Irish GM tried the opening phase in a very unusual fashion. It seemed white was having a huge advantage due to the presence of his passed pawn on the central d5 square which further advanced to the d6 square.Black's piecesseemed to lack mobility, but it was all part of Baburin's home preparation. He methodically pushed back white's pieces and then encircled capturing the advanced pawn to score a commanding victory in 43 moves.Bhagyashree, who was having fine run in the tournament so far seemed to have ran out of fuel. She conducted the middle game in her pet Dutch defence poorly to gift an easy win to Lahiri. She was saddled with a bad bishop to white's centrally posted knight. This proved to be the decisive factor.GM Pravin Thipsay, Bhagyashree's husband, however, was in his elements today. He outclassed compatriot IM K Murugan in Sicilian Paulsen game where the latter was black.In a middle game position with all the heavy pieces on board, the players had bishops of opposite colours with equal pawns on both the sides. Thipsay's bishop cracked through the black f7 pawn to catch the rival king in a mating net.Indian IM V Koshy let go a good opportunity to score against top seed GM Anthony Miles of England. Koshywith white pieces opted for his favourite English opening and gained space advantage on the queenside and a central outpost for his knight.He won a pawn and exchanged pieces to enter a rook ending which should have been a simple win. But in time-trouble Koshy allowed miles to escape with a draw by exchanging two pawns.Prasad played Ruy Lopez with white against Mahmood Lodhi of Pakistan. Black sacrificed a knight for two central pawns to create enough counterplay to draw the game.Results (Round six): R B Ramesh (5) lost to Alexander Baburin (5); Atanu Lahiri (5) bt Bhagyashree Thipsay (4); D V Prasad (4.5) drew with Mahmood Lodhi (4); V Koshy (4) drew Anthony Miles (4); Anup Deshmukh (3.5) lost to Dibyendu Barua (4.5); Pravin Thipsay (4.5) bt K Murugan (3.5); Roy Phillips (3.5) drew S Kidambi (3.5); S S Ganguly (4) bt Vedant Goswami (3); G P Singh (3.5) drew with P Harikrishna (3.5); Koneru Humpy (3) drew with Rahul Shetty (3); Dilip Pagay (3.5) drew with K Visweswaran (3.5); Sandipan Chanda(4) bt Mohd Waqar (2.5); Andrew Webster (3.5) bt S Vijayalakshmi (2.5); H Mas (3.5) bt D K Sharma (2.5); N K Mishra (2.5) lost to Swati Ghate (3.5); Sriram Jha (3.5) bt Swayan Baran De (2.5); J M Utarid (2.5) lost to PDS Girinath (3.5); K Gopalakrishna (2.5) lost to R M Dongre (3.5); P Mithrakanth (2.5) lost to R M Dongre (3.5); P Konguvel (4) bt C S Gokhale (3.5).
