Straight contest between Ivanchuk, Krasenkov

CHENNAI, MAY 18. The contest in the Leonid Stein Memorial Chess Tournament at Lviv in Ukraine now looks like a straight one between top seed and leader Vassily Ivanchuk and Michal Krasenkov of Poland. Wednesday was a free day.

At the end of the fifth round in Ukraine's strongest category 17 chess tournament, Ivanchuk leads by half a point. He has four points and Krasenkov, who has played a little aggressively so far, is on 3.5 points. There is a wide 1.5-point gap between these two and the rest of the field making it unlikely that others will join the title race. Five more rounds remain to be played.

This event and the Sarajevo tournament have clashed making it unusual for super category chess which saw a slump in activities in 1999. The last time such a clash occurred was in 1995 when Anand, Kasparov, Kramnik, Ivanchuk, etc played in Riga, Latvia while Latvia's own Shirov, Karpov, Kamsky, Adams, etc played at Dos Hermanas, Spain.

The standings after five rounds: 1 V. Ivanchuk (Ukr) 4/5, 2 M. Krasenkov (Pol) 3.5, 3-5 A. Beliavsky (Slv), V. Korchnoi (Swz), O. Romanishin (Ukr) 2 each, 6 B. Gelfand (Isr) 1.5.

- Our Chess Correspondent.

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