Abhijeet Gupta won the battle of two former champions, taming a tenacious M.R. Lalith Babu in 54 moves to maintain his half-point lead following his sixth victory in as many rounds of the Commonwealth chess championship here on Saturday.
In the last edition, too, Abhijeet had won the first six rounds. But thereafter, he lost his way.
The top seed is half a point ahead of defending champion Deep Sengupta, who beat Ankit Rajpara to reach 5.5 points. A number of players, including several Grandmasters, are part of the pack on five points.
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In Grunfeld, Abhijeet gained a pawn early, but Lalith had enough compensation. He could have regained the pawn, but continued to play for initiative. Thereafter, a series of less-than-optimum moves from Lalith gave Abhijeet the upper hand.
However, Abhijeet rushed his moves at one point, but realised that his advantage was almost next to nothing. But, Lalith erred once again, this time due to pressure from the clock, and Abhijeet romped home.
It was a good day for several GMs who played to their strengths against lesser-rated players. But, Bangladesh veteran Niaz Murshed was not so lucky against former National champion G. Akash.
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The results: Sixth round: M.R. Lalith Babu (4.5) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (6); Ankit Rajpara (4.5) lost to Deep Sengupta (5.5); Sahaj Grover (5) drew with Arghyadip Das (5); Himanshu Sharma (5) drew with Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 5); S. Nitin (4.5) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (4.5); M. Karthikeyan (4) lost to C.R.G. Krishna (5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (5) bt Rishi Sardana (4); Nicholas van der Nat (SAF, 4) lost to Abhijit Kunte (5); S.L. Narayanan (5) bt N.R. Visakh (4); Niaz Murshed (Ban, 4) lost to G. Akash (5); K. Praneeth Surya (5) bt Saptarshi Roy (4); Padmini Rout (5) bt Harsha Bharathakoti (4); N. Sanjay (5) bt Mohammad Minhas Uddin (Ban, 4); K. Ratnakaran (5) bt Krishna Teja (3); S. Jayakumar (4) lost to Ravi Teja (4); Akshat Khamparia (4.5) drew with Athul Krishna (4.5); Saurabh Anand (4) lost to N.R. Vignesh (5); Sriram Jha (5) bt Shailesh Dravid (4).