Moscow (IANS) : Krishnan Sasikiran went as far as 133 moves but was still unable to find the win over Poland’s Bartlomiej Macieja that would take him into the last 16 of the chess World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk.
Sasikiran, playing with white, may have missed a win but with lot of complications and time pressure he was unable to complete the game and finally had to be satisfied with a draw.
Sasikiran sacrificed a rook for a minor piece in the middle game. Later, Macieja was forced to give back the rook for two minor pieces. But Macieja was able to clean up all his rival’s pawns.
Sasikiran had a rook and an extra knight against his rival’s rook and a pawn. He picked that last pawn on the board on the 82nd move. But from there on, for more than 50 moves he tried, but could not find that win.
When they split the point Sasikaran had a rook and knight to Macieja’s rook.
Sasikiran will now go into the tie-breaker for the third successive round. His last two wins have come in the Blitz games.
Other leading players in the tie-breaker of the third round will be top-seed Vassily Ivanchuk, fourth seed Levon Aronian, Ukraine’s Sergey Karjakin, Russia’s Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk.
Meanwhile, ten of the 16 matches have been decided after the second game of the third round. Another six matches with 12 players will go into the tie-breaker. None of the losers in the first game of the third round were able to find their way back.
Moving into the last 16 are, Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria, who stunned one of the favourites Shakriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan 1.5-0.5. Other winners were Alexei Shirov of Spain over American Alexander Onischuk, Michael Adams of England over Zhou Jianchao of China, Russia’s Evgeny Alekseev over Laurent Fressinet of France, Swede Magnus Carlsen over Lenier Dominguez Perez of Cuba, America’s Gata Kamsky over Bulagria’s Kiril Georgiev, Vladimir Akopian of Armenia over Vladimir Malakhov.
Dmitry Jakovenko of Russian moved past Zoltan Almasi of Hungary, Ruslan Ponomariov beat Evgeny Tomashevksy of Russia and Wang Yue beat fellow Chinese Bu Xiangzhi.