Hungarian GM Gara Ticia. Adhiban played an aggressive game and did not give the Hungarian any chance to capitalise. He now has 6.5 points.
On the second board, Nikolai Chadaev of Russia was also stretched all the way by local lad Saumil Padhya but the latter was outplayed towards the end.
Padhye played enterprisingly with the white pieces against Chadaev and did not miss any opportunity to exchange pieces.
In the end, however, the Russian showed better technique to first win a pawn and then the game after 76 moves.
In another important result John Paul Gomez of Philippines defeated a slightly higher rated Kirill Stupak of Belarus. Gomez and Chadaev, along with Alexandrov and Devaitkin, are now tied with seven points.
It will be interesting to see how the tournament shapes up in the next three days, with the concluding day on Friday determining a clear winner.

Important Results
Round 8: GM Aleksej Alexandrov (7) drew GM Andrei Devaitkin (7), Saumil Padhya (6) lost to GM Nikolai Chadaev (7), GM Hoang Thanh Trang (6.5) drew GM Abhijit Kunte (6.5), GM Kirill Stupak (6) lost to GM John Paul Gomez (7); GM Mark Paragua (6) drew IM Lanka Ravi (6); WGM Ticia Gara (5.5) lost to GM B Adhiban (6.5); GM Ziaur Rahman (6.5) bt Debaraj Chatterjee (5.5); Sagar Shah (5.5) lost to IM Sahaj Grover (6.5); GM Deepan Chakra-varthy (6.5) bt Rakesh Kulkarni (5.5); Rajesh V A V (5.5) lost to Vishnu Prasanna (6.5); Mithil Ajgaonkar (5.5) drew GM Oliver Barbosa (5.5); IM Vaibhav Suri (6) bt Himal Gusain (5); GM Atilla Czebe (6) bt Sayantan Das (5);Bai Jinshi (5.5) drew GM Sriram Jha (5.5)