New Delhi: Grandmaster Mikhail Mozharov of Russia stayed ahead with a hard fought draw with compatriot Ivan Popov in the ninth and penultimate round of 13th Parsvnath International Grandmasters chess tournament now drawing to a close here.

C R G Krishna, Aniruddha Deshpande, Abhishek Kelkar and Ravi Teja continued with their fine run in the tournament and secured their International Master norm with one round to spare. The other norm hopefuls will have to wait for the final round for now.

Mozharov played a nearly crazy game before he could force a draw with Popov. Although room-mates and friends, the two Russians came up with some exemplary chess that kept the audience on the web guessing for a long time.

Popov sacrificed as many as three pawns in the opening but eventually took the draw after Mozharov steered his king to safety.

It turned out to be a bad outing for GM norm seekers as both N Srinath and S Nitin ended on the losing side against Grandmaster opposition. It was heartbreak for Srinath after doing exceptionally well in the tournament as he was grinded by Alberto David of Italy in a long drawn game while Nitin never found the going easy against Duc Hoa Nguyen of Vietnam.

With just one round to come, Mozharov on 7.5 points is now followed by as many as five players on seven points each. They are Popov, Van Huy Nguyen of Vietnam, Andrey Baryshpolets of Ukraine, David and Deepan Chakkravarthy. These five are followed by another pack of 11 players on 6.5 points each.

The miss-of-the-day came from Deepan Chakkravarthy who let go of a winning position and had to settle for a draw with Anton Demchenko of Russia. After nearly outplaying Demchenko in the middle game and attaining what could be described as a completely won position, Chakkravarthy missed the thread and eventually had to split the point in the ensuing rook and pawns endgame.

Among other Indians in the fray the two top rated Indians had to go through long grinds. Abhijeet Gupta was stretched a lot by Diego Del Rey before he could score a victory while Sahaj Grover played out a draw with S Satyapragyan.

Important Results Round-9 (Indians unless stated) :-

GM Ivan Popov of Russia (7) drew with GM Mikhail Mozharov of Russia (7.5); IM Nguyen Van Huy of Vietnam (7) drew with GM Andrey Baryshpolets of Ukraine (7); GM Anton Demchenko of Russia (6.5) drew with GM Deepan Chakkravarthy (7); IM N Srinath (6) lost to GM Alberto David of Italy (7); GM Neelotpal Das (6.5) drew with GM Cristhian Cruz of Peru (6.5); IM Rathnakaran K (6.5) drew with GM Abhijit Kunte (6.5); GM Sabino Brunello of Italy (6) drew with IM Narayanan S L (6); GM Sahaj Grover (6) drew with IM S Satyapragyan (6); GM Nguyen Duc Hoa of Vietnam (6.5) beat IM Nitin S (5.5); GM Axel Rombaldoni of Italy (6.5) beat IM Vikrmaditya Kulkarni (5.5); GM Debashis Das (6.5) beat Krishna Teja N (5.5); IM Thejkumar M S (5.5) lost to CRG Krishna (6.5); Niranjan Navalgund (5.5) lost to IM Saptarshi Roy (6.5); Himal Gusain (6.5) beat IM Shardul Gagare (5.5) GM Abhijeet Gupta (6) beat IM Del Rey Diego of Spain (5); IM Murali Krishnan B T (5.5) drew with GM Eldar Gasanov of Ukraine (5.5); Ravi Teja S (6) beat GM Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan (5); IM Chakkravarthyy Reddy (5) lost to GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh (6); Abhishek Kelkar (5.5) drew with GM Valeriy Neverov of Ukraine (5.5); GM Shyam Sundar (5.5) drew with GM Vladimir Lazarev of France (5.5).