By Yash Mudgal/Doha

Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik defeated top seed Anish Giri in the seventh round of the Qatar Masters International open chess tournament yesterday to join him as the leader.
The Russian did not have the best of the starts in the championship but notched up his fifth consecutive victory and now has six points from seven rounds.
Kramnik defeated the Dutch star, who had a perfect record in the championship having won all his six previous matches for his six points, in an emphatic display of chess.
“I don’t think I was playing badly in the first couple of games of the tournament. I think my opponents played well in the first two games,” said the Russian who is playing in an open tournament after a long time.  
“I played well in the first two rounds, but couldn’t manage to win. I am in better position after today’s victory, but I was not expecting to win so many matches in a row. It’s good,” he said.
Kramnik will play Salem AR Saleh in the penultimate round today, while Giri will take on Yu Yangi, who defeated Aleksandr Lenderman to be joint second with Salem AR Saleh with five and half points each.
In the other games of the day Evgeny Tomashevsky and Yuriy Kryvoruchko played draws against Mikhailo Oleksienko and Sam Shankland, respectively.
Earlier, GM Abhijeet Gupta continued with his fine form to hold much higher ranked Indian P Harikrishna to an easy draw in the sixth round.
With his second straight draw against members of top-50 club, Gupta took his tally to four points out of a possible six along with Harikrishna and these two were joined by B Adhiban who scored his fourth victory on the trot to reach four points.
Harikrishna decided to battle it out in the Grunfeld defence, an opening considered to be Gupta’s forte. Harikrishna got a slight advantage with accurate play in the middle game but his decision to exchange queens did not turn out well.
With precision, Gupta liquidated to a level endgame and gave no further chances to his more famous opponent. Adhiban defeated Gunay Mammadzada of Azerbaijan in another clean attempt. After losing the first two rounds, this has been a remarkable turnaround by the Indian and he looks good for more in the last few games.
Among other Indians in the fray, Debashish Das came up with a fine performance to beat higher ranked Gabriel Sargissian of Armenia while S Vijayalakshmi remained unbeaten against strong opposition as she held Xu Jun of China to a draw in the sixth round.
Aravindh Chithambaram improved his chances drawing with Ivan Salgado Lopez while Surya Shekhar Ganguly suffered a setback at the hands of Armenian lady Elina Danilian.
The strongest open tournament of the world tournament is being conducted according to the Swiss System of nine rounds and if necessary a play-off.
The event will end tomorrow. The total prize money is $110,000. The first place winner will get $25,000. First place for ladies is $5,000.