Chanda beats FIDE Master Erik Hedman

On a day when draws were the norm, Sandipan Chanda strengthened his chances of a final Grandmaster norm with a finely-crafted victory over FIDE Master Erik Hedman of Sweden in the fifth round of the Czech Open Grandmaster tournament in Pardubice.

Czech GM Jiri Stocek outwitted International Master Vladimir Belov of Russia in the lone decisive game on the top nine boards and joined overnight leader Vladislav Borovikov of Ukraine atop the table on 4.5 points.

Top seed GM Krishnan Sasikiran, GM Pendyala Harikrishna, GM Abhijit Kunte, IM S S Ganguly and Sandipan are among 27 players closely following the two leaders with 4 points each to their credit.

Hedman entered where even the best fear to tread against Sandipan. Going for unwarranted complications from the black side of a Reti opening, the Swede was outclassed by Sandipan in the middlegame. To wriggle out of his difficulties Hedman was forced to part with a pawn and got the Bishops of opposite colour.

Undeterred by the exchange of pieces at regular intervals, Sandipan cashed in on another mistake by his opponent and exchanged the queens on the 27th move to arrive at a winning endgame.

The technicalities were handled in copybook fashion thereon by Sandipan and he notched the full point in 42 moves.

Harikrishna defeated IM Cvek Robert of Czech Republic to move ahead after a rather slack start in the tournament.

Taking a cue from teammate Ganguly's victory against GM Klovans in the previous round, Harikrishna added some more flavour to the Glek variation of the Scotch opening with the white pieces.

Robert was confined to a passive defence as Harikrishna rolled his kingside pawn early in the middlegame and got a spatial advantage.

In his bid to equalise quickly, Robert made a positional mistake and gave Harikrishna a pawn majority on the queen side that proved decisive. Harikrishna nonchalantly exchanged all the heavy pieces barring the queen and then worked the Bishops of opposite colours to his advantage to create a mating web around Robert's king. The game lasted 39 moves.

For top seed Sasikiran it turned out to be an eventful draw with IM Emanuel Berg of Sweden.

Playing black, Sasikiran employed the Sicilian Nazdorf and faced the sharp English attack. Berg did not venture into the attacking variations and played it safe to allow Sasikiran to equalise early in the middlegame.

Sasikiran, however, pressed hard for an advantage right through but did not quite succeed and the game was drawn vide perpetual checks in 42 moves.

Ganguly and Kunte played a 25-move draw between them- selves from an English opening while GM Dibyendu Barua had a similar result against Martin Kubala (Czech Republic).

Asian Junior girls' Champion Tania Sachdev continued with her impressive run and held Woman Grandmaster Irina Umanskaya to a draw. Tania has 2.5 points from five games.