Six players, top-seed GM Alexie Federov (Belarus), GM Sergei Dolmatov (Russia), GM Dibyendu Barua (India), GM Roman Slobodjan (Germany), N Neelkanthan and IWM N Saritha Reddy, jointly lead with all-win record.Sharma, who drew with GM Sorokin yesterday, played a very determined defensive game to score his biggest win of the career so far. Ehlvest, who has played with the likes of Kasparov, Karpov and almost all top players of the world in his hay days, opened with the King Pawn and avoided sharp variations to enter a slightly better middlegame with attacking prospects.Sharma, obviously surprised by his illustrious opponent's opening choice, took almost an hour for ten moves but produced excellent moves in the middlegames to wriggle outwith only a miniscule advantage.

In mutual time troubled Ehlvest fumbled and sacrificed a rook, hoping to draw the game with perpetual checks. Sharma accepted the offered material and again showed precise defensive technique to gobble the full point. Exciting chess was the order of the day or so was evident on the top two boards. GM Federov faced the Trompowsky attack of GM norm holder Sasikiran and both went for blood right from the word "go".

In a near harmless position Sasikiran sacrificed two pawns to complicate matters in the middle game.

Federov, hailed as a tactician the world over, returned the favour with an additional pawn as the game progressed into wild tactical complications. Sasikiran let Federov's rook invade the seventh rank on the 30th move which turned out to be a decisive mistake as the rook coupled with queen and knight made irresistible threats.

Sasikiran finally succumbed to the enormous pressure on 40th move where he was losing a piece by force. Barua (white) outplayed IM LankaRavi in a Sicilian Scheveningen. Lanka equalised in the opening as Barua went for an off-beat variation but could not keep the momentum and lost a pawn. Thereon Barua played superbly, keeping his bishop, and obtained a central passed pawn to add to his kitty.

GM Dolmatov needed just 20 moves to thwart the challenge of IM norm holder Anup Deshmukh who employed the Marshall Gambit with black piece. An opening inaccuracy by Deshmukh allowed Dolmatov to regroup his Kingside comfortably after which the former fell into a simple mating trap.

Reddy and Neelkanthan had little difficulty in overcoming the challenge of Somak Palit and world Under-12 champion Koneru Humpy respectively. The real test for these two winners start tomorrow when they take on titled players. Much to the dismay of the spectators the games between GMs Glezerov (Rus)-Wojtkeiwicz (Pol) and Komliakov (MDA)-Ulibin (Rus) were drawn quickly.GM Siobodjan was lucky to score a full point against youngster Sandipan Chanda in a Guico Piano opening. Ina seemingly drawn queen plus knight and queen plus bishop endgame, Chanda overlooked an obvious manoeuvre to go down tamely.