Gupta ahead in C’wealth chess

Grandmaster and former champion Abhijeet Gupta inched closer to regaining the Commonwealth Chess Championship after settling for a quick draw with fellow Grandmaster Deepan <g data-gr-id="18">Chakkravarthy</g> in the eighth and penultimate round here on Monday. With 7.5 points from eight rounds, Gupta is half a point ahead of nearest contender Arghyadip Das, who accounted for Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte.

It turned out to be a rather dull day in the championship with many drawn results. However, most of the games were hard-fought. Grandmaster M R Lalith Babu, International Master S Ravi Teja, former national champion G Akash are all having 6.5 points each but the surprise was sprung by Siva Mahadevan, who continued his impressive run and downed IM K Rathnakaran. Lalith Babu had his task cut out against C R G Krishna and the former champion prevailed with his white pieces. Akash defeated Grandmaster Sahaj Grover in another upset result for the latter in the championship. In another interesting game, Ravi Teja drew with S L Narayanan.