second at Pamplona, half a point behind Ruslan Ponomariov. In March 2006, Pentala tied for first (fifth on tiebreak) with winner Gabriel Sargissian, Ahmed Adly, Mamedyarov, and Igor-Alexander Nataf at the Reykjavik Open with 7/9. After competing in the 37th Chess Olympiad, he performed badly a month later with shared last place at Aerosvit, though he bounced back with victory at Marx Gyorgy Memorial then won the Chess960 Junior Chess Championship winning the last four games against Arkadij Naiditsch with the final score 4½–3½. 2007 started on a bad note with 3.5/9 at the Aeroflot Open but he recovered to come third at the Montreal International, losing in the final round to tournament winner Ivanchuk. Pentala tied for first (second on wins tiebreak) at Marx Gyorgy then finished 20th at the Mainz FiNet Rapid Open. At the end of 2007, he lost 3-1 in the final of the Carlos Torre Memorial to Ivanchuk and came fourth on tiebreak at the Reggio Emilia. Pentala played tournaments less frequently after 2007 but finished fourth at the 2008 Corus Group B with 7.5/13, followed by several team events and winning on tiebreak in September 2008 at the Spice Cup in Lubbock, United States. He was seeded to the knockout stages of the XXI Carlos Tore Memorial but was eliminated 3-2 by Jan Ehlvest in the quarter finals. A last round loss to Peter Svidler saw Pentala slip from co-leader to shared seventh at the January 2009 Gibraltar Chess Congress, but won the Nancy Rapid event the next month, a point ahead of Georg Meier. He lost three consecutive games at the 39th Bosna Tournament to finish fifth out of six and scoring 4/10, also struggling at Zurich's 200th Anniversary event, finishing shared 27th with 6/9. At the Chigorin Memorial he came fifteenth after tiebreaks in the Open section and won the blitz section. He finished the year helping India win the Asian Team Championships. 2010–2013 Pentala came tied sixth at Corus Chess Group B with 6.5/13 in January 2010 before a poor performance at the Asian Individual Championship, finishing 23rd after tiebreaks and losing 17 rating points Some consolation came with shared first with Ehlvest at the New York International. He shared second place scoring 7/9 at the World Open, half a point behind Viktor Láznička, but lost his rating gains at the Canadian Open with 6/9 sharing 23rd place. His strong performance