Victory puts Kunal in sole lead

Tamil Nadu’s Kunal M defeated Karnataka’s Arvind Shastry to take the sole lead with eight points after the eighth round of the 2nd MDCA all-India Open FIDE-rated chess tournament at the Teresian Higher Primary School auditorium here on Tuesday.

Results (Round VIII): Arvind Shastry (Kar, 6.5) lt to Kunal M (TN, 8); Ram S Krishnan (TN, 6) lt to Vinoth Kumar M (TN, 7); Gireman Ja (TN, 6.5) drew Aravindh Chitambaram (TN, 6.5); Vijendra YG (Kar, 7) bt Raghavendra V (Kar, 6); Bala Kannamma P (TN, 7) bt Augustin A (Kar, 5.5); Roshan Rangarajan (Mah, 5.5) lt to Chakravarthy Reddy M (AP, 6.5); Pranavananda V (AP, 6.5) bt Naren N Kumar (Kar, 5.5); Manjunath J (Kar, 6.5) bt Sharan Rao (Kar, 5.5); Krishna Karthik N (AP, 5.5) lt to Ashwini U (TN, 6.5).