The victory helped Abhijeet cement his place at the top as the Indian now leads the field by a full-point margin with just one round remaining. In addition, Gupta is at least assured of a joint first place in one of his favourite hunting ground.
This is his fourth appearance here, and on the previous three occasions, Gupta has been a joint winner twice and joint second once. This time the tide may turn and he can win it solely barring a debacle in the last round game.
Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly was quite unlucky not to convert a simply won position against Shota Azaladze of Georgia and surprisingly ended on the losing side. This was a rare error by Ganguly who works with World champion Viswanathan Anand as his second.
As a result of this faux pas, Ganguly remained on 5.5 points and Gupta now enjoys a full-point lead over nearest rivals Azaladze, Marin Bosiocic of Croatia, Alessio Valsecchi and Ashwin Jayaram.
For the records, Ashwin Jayaram recorded the biggest upset in the tournament by defeating top seed Tigran Petrosian of Armenia in the eighth round.
Among other Indians in the fray, Grandmaster S P Sethuraman played out a draw with higher ranked Ioannis Papaioannou of Greece while International Master Akshayraj KOre drew with Davit Maghalashvili of Georgia. S Nitin and G A Stany won their games against lower ranked opponents while Neelotpal Das and Kruttika Nadig conceded draws. MORE