Krishnan Sasikiran had to be content with a fifth place finish after drawing his 10th and final round game with Germany's Arkadij Naiditsch in the Bosna 2006 international Grandmasters' chess tournament.
Needing a little more than a 50 per cent score from the tournament to break even, Sasikiran finished with 4.5 points out of a possible 10 and will lose some Elo rating points from the event.
However, on the brighter side, Sasikiran can take the event as his preparations before the 37th chess Olympiad, starting in a few days in Turin, Italy, in which the ONGC employee is likely to play on the second board for the country.
The last round of the high category event did not have much for enthusiastic fans as top seeded Romanian Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu played it safe as white against Vladimir Malakhov of Russia and Magnus Carlsen did not succeed in breaking the defense of home contender Borki Predojevic.
As a result, Nisipeanu, Carlsen and Malakhov finished tied first on 5.5 points apiece while Predojevic was fourth on 5.
Sasikiran was next on 4.5 points while Dortmund champion Naiditsch finished last in the six-players double round-robin event.
Playing with white in the final round game, Sasikiran got little in the queen's gambit accepted opening by transposition and Naiditsch achieved a fairly balanced position after he successfully traded the queens on the 16th move.
Sasikiran tried to make a foray for some in the ensuing endgame but precise defensive moves by the German helped him retain a level position and subsequent exchanges led to a rook and minor pieces endgame with just two pawns for each side.
Sasikiran forcibly repeated the position here to force a draw after 44 moves.
Carlsen played exciting chess as he wanted to win the event solely. It was an open Ruy Lopez in which the last game to end in the tournament witnessed fortunes fluctuating for quite sometime and Carlsen was in fact in serious trouble after declining an unconditional draw by repetition of the position in the middle game.
The endgame saw Predojevic pressing for decisive advantage and it took a real effort on Carlsen's part to remain in the game and finally a thematic piece sacrifice by the Norwegian wonder forced a draw after 88 moves.
Nisipeanu employed the Alapin opening as white against the Sicilian defense and declared his peaceful intentions early in the game.
Malakhov agreed to the draw proposal in just 12 moves.
Results, final round: Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 5.5) drew with Borki Predojevic (Bih, 5); Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu (Rom, 5.5) drew with Vladimir Malakhov (Rus, 5.5); Krishnan Sasikiran (Ind, 4.5) drew with Arkadij Naiditsch (Ger, 4).
Final standings: 1-3. Carlsen, Nisipeanu, Malakhov (5.5); 4. Predojevic (5); 5. Sasikiran (4.5); 6. Naiditsch (4).
