Top seed Gupta surges ahead of chasing pack in C'wealth chess

Top seed and former champion Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta continued his winning run in the fifth round of the Commonwealth Chess Championship here on Friday.

On a day that started with seven players tied at the leader's board with four points each, Abhijeet Gupta took the clear cut lead as others in the fray dropped points.

Grandmaster Lalith Babu M R drew against Arghyadip Das and Delhiite Sahaj Grover settled for a draw against Himanshu Sharma. The only other player with four points, Niaz Murshed from Bangladesh went down to defending champion Deep Sengupta.

Playing white, Abhijeet Gupta scored the win over Grandmaster Murali Karthikeyan in 32 moves and now has a half point advantage with four rounds to go.

Woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev's woeful run at the championship continued as she lost to Thanki Hemal Karsenji. This is her second loss and after the fifth round she has 2.5 points.

In other results, Grandmaster Neelotpal Das drew against D. Yashas. Das now has three points.

Results Round-5 (Indians otherwise stated): Abhijeet Gupta (5) bt Karthikeyan Murali (4), Arghyadip Das (4.5) drew Lalith Babu M R (4.5), Himanshu Sharma (4.5) drew Sahaj Grover (4.5), Deep Sengupta (4.5) bt Niaz Murshed (BAN) (3.5), Ziaur Rahman (BAN) (4.5) bt Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (3.5), Visakh Nr (4) drew Deepan Chakravarthy (4), Abhijit Kunte (4) drew Akash G (4), Harsha Bharathakoti (4) drew Narayanan S L (4), Ankit R Rajpara (4.5) bt Sekar B (3.5), Saptarshi Roy (4) drew Sanjay N (4), Athul Krishna S (4) drew Sriram Jha (4), Ajay Krishna S (3) lost to Padmini Rout (4), Srinath Rao S V (3.5) drew Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3.5), Laxman R R (3.5) drew Dhulipala Bala Chandra Prasad (3.5), Ravi Teja S (4) bt Majumdar Chandrasish (3), Vignesh Nr (4) bt Lokesh N (3).