NEW DELHI: D. Harika continued her dream run by holding the 20th seeded Russian Grandmaster Sergey Volkov while P. Hari Krishna posted his first victory to stay in the company of K. Sasikiran and Surya Shekhar Ganguly at three points after six rounds of the Aeroflot Open chess tournament in Moscow on Monday.

By holding Volkov, rated 214 points higher at 2636, Harika has remained a contender to emerge as the strongest lady player in the field. For Harika, the lowest-rated player in the field, the draw was the fourth this week against a GM with a rating in excess of 2600.

She has so far accumulated 15 rating points, most by an Indian in the tournament, with a staggering rating performance of 2614.

On the other hand, joint top seed Sasikiran struggled to a draw against much lower-rated Russian GM Valerij Popov. On the brighter side, Hari Krishna's search for victory ended against United States' GM Alexander Ivanov.

On a day when nine of the top 10 boards, including the first six, ended in draws, Russian GM Stanislav Novikov led with five points.

In Group `B', Arun Karthik continued to share the lead at six points with two rounds to go.

The results (involving Indians):

`A1' (sixth round): Valerij Popov (Rus, 3) drew with K. Sasikiran (3); D. arika (3) drew with Sergey Volkov (Rus, 3); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (3) drew with Evgeniy Najer (Rus, 3); P. Hari Krishna (3) bt Alexander Ivanov (USA, 2); Yuri Dorzdovskij (Ukr, 2.5) bt S. Vijayalakshmi (1.5); Emanuel Berg (Swe, 2) bt Parimarjan Negi (1).

`A2' (sixth round): Robert Ris (Ned, 4) drew with Abhijit Kunte (4); Maxim Rodshtein (Isr, 4.5) bt G. Rohit (3.5); Artur Chibukhchian (Arm, 4) bt Deepan Chakkravarthy (3); S. Meenakshi (3) lost to Benjamin Galstian (Arm, 4); Nikolai Chadaev (Rus, 3) drew with G. N. Gopal (3); Pavel Potapov (Rus, 2) drew with Deep Sengupta (2); Elena Tairova (Rus, 1) lost to Aswin Jayaram (2); Rauan Mankeyev (Kaz, 2) bt Lanka Ravi (1); Tania Sachdev (1.5) drew with S. Arun Prasad (1.5).

`B' (seventh round): Arun Karthik (6) drew with Vasif Durarbeyli (Aze, 6); David Kalashian (Arm, 5.5) drew with Suvrajit Saha (5.5); Dinesh Kumar Sharma (5) bt Daria Charochkina (Rus, 4); Aarthie Ramaswamy (4.5) drew with Sergey Shurygin (Rus, 4.5); Sahaj Grover (3.5) lost to Maria Kursova (Rus, 4.5); Baira Kovanova (Rus, 4) bt Padmini Rout (3); Abhishek Das (4) bt Savina Anastasia (Rus, 3); B. Adhiban (3.5) bt Alexandre Vuilleumier (Sui, 2.5).

`C' (seventh round): Sergei Volkov (Rus, 5.5) bt P. Priya (4.5); Amruta Mokal (4.5) drew with Igor Golberg (Isr, 4.5); Elkin Alexander (Rus, 4) lost to Soumya Swaminathan (5); Mahima Rajmohan (3) lost to Ludwig Rettore (Ita, 4); Vladimir Mogila (Kaz, 4) bt P. Sivasankari (3).

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