R B Ramesh, half point behind the sole leader, also continued with his stunning form beating S K Rathore (2.5). Former National champion Abhijit Kunte, despite his today's loss to GM Pravin Thipsay, and India's youngest IM from Bengal -- Neelotpal Das, who beat Tejas Bakre in the seventh round, were joint third with 4.5 points each.

Sasikiran, playing white against Saha, opted for Samisch variation of the former's King's Indian Defence. In the middlegame both had an isolated pawn on the d-file. Sasikiran launched the first attack targeting his rivals' weak `d5' pawn. Saha was so cautious today that he needed a long time to think over his moves. But that bore no fruits for Saha fell to acute timepressure and resigned on the 39th move.

After suffering not-so-good run in the championship GM Thipsay won a game against his state mate Abhijit Kunte, who played a Sicilian Defence against GM's King Pawn Opening. And as expected, Thipsay put his piece in a position that helped him break through the kingside. However, the timely barter of the dark squared bishop's, Kunte delayed Thipsay's mate. He took longer time after the first 30 moves and when it appeared he was out of the woods, Kunte overstepped time limit on the 36th move to award the GM full points.

The game between Verghese Koshy and T S Ravi proved to be a complex one -- particularly in the middlegame. Koshy got an isolated pawn on c4 square and that was his weakness which he had to guard all the time. The game reached an ending in which Koshy had queen, knight and five pawns to Ravi's queen, bishop and five pawns. Koshy, who was too defensive, was in a big trouble soon as Ravi used his forces menacingly. Koshy lost his knight and the game onmove 41.

In another game, S K Rathore went down to R B Ramesh in sudden-death after a marathon battle of 78 moves.

In his game against D V Prasad, N K Mishra left his king in the centre ignoring castling. He blundered on a crucial move and there was no end to his miseries. Prasad won the game in 37 moves under the threat of mate.

Shankar Roy's King Pawn Opening was tackled by V Saravanan's Modern Defence, but the former transposed the opening into the King's Indian Defence (exchange variation). Roy doubled Saravanan's pawn on a a-file, but continued carelessly to lose both his queenside pawn to give Saravanan clear advantage in the ending. Saravanan benefitted from his a-file passed pawn and won the game in 43 moves.

Neelotpal Das beat Tejas Bakre, G B Prakash held P Konguvel, while R G Hegde and Anup Deshmukh agreed to split the points after eight moves.

KOYA SYSTEM TO BE USED: For the first time in India, the Koya system will be applied for resolving the ties to decide placings and also theprizes. The novel method which is a brainchild of P T Ummer Koya, secretary of All India Chess Federation and vice-president of the Fide, was approved at the Fide Congress at Elista last year.

The features of the system are as under:

For round robin tournaments: The number of points achieved against all opponents who have scored 50 per cent and more.

Extended system: The Koya system may be extended step by step to include score groups with less than 50 per cent.

Results (seventh round): Sasikiran (6.5) bt Saha (2.5), Rathore (2.5) lost to R B Ramesh (6), P Thipsay (4) bt A Kunte (4.5), T Bakre (2.5) lost to N Das (4.5), G B Prakash (4) drew with Konguvel (2.5), V Koshy (2.5) lost to T S Ravi (4), S Roy (1) lost to Sarvanan (4), R G Hegde (2.5) drew with Anup Deshmukh (3.5), D V Prasad (3) bt N K Mishra (2.5).