Sriram Jha and fellow Grandmaster Russia's Pavel Maletin maintained their all-win sequence to lead with five points after as many rounds of the Parsvnath Commonwealth chess championship here on Wednesday. Jha overpowered sixth seeded Russian Dmitry Bocharov after Maletin had punished a passive D. Harika.
The day produced quite a few upsets but it was teen talent K. Priyadarshan who took the spotlight after nailing two Grandmasters on this day to join the trailing pack at 4.5 points.
Priyadarshan stunned seventh seeded Argentine Pablo Lafuente in the morning and returned to surprise Uzbekistan's Marat Dzhumaev, with black pieces.
The results (Indians unless stated):
Fifth round: Alexey Dreev (Rus, 4.5) drew with Martyn Kravtsiv (Ukr, 4.5); Sriram Jha (5) bt Dmitry Bocharov (Rus, 4); D. Harika (4) lost to Pavel Maletin (Rus, 5); N. Srinath (4) lost to Parimarjan Negi (4.5); Tejas Bakre (4) drew with Dmitry Kokarev (Rus, 4); Eltaj Safarli (Aze, 4) drew with M. R. Venkatesh (4); Abhijeet Gupta (4.5) bt Anwesh Upadhyaya (3.5); P. Konguvel (4.5) bt Rustam Khusnutdinov (Kaz, 3.5); Saidali Iuldachev (Uzb, 4.5) bt Swayams Mishra (3.5); B. S. Shivananda (4) drew with B. Adhiban (4); Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb, 3.5) lost to K. Priyadarshan (4.5).
Fourth round: Swapnil Dhopade lost to Dreev; Bocharov bt Aswin Jayaram; Maletin bt Debashish Das; Venkatesh drew with Abhijeet; Kravtsiv bt K. Rathnakaran; Tania Sachdev lost to Jha; Enamul Hossain lost to N. Srinath; Shyam Nikhil drew with Marat Dzhumaev; Shyam Sundar lost to Harika; Bakre drew with S. Nitin.
