Suri, Nitin in joint lead after Rd 7
Delhi Grandmaster Vaibhav Suri along with International Master S. Nitin led the table with six points after round seven of the Commonwealth Chess Championship in the capital on Sunday.
Playing with black pieces in the Caro- Kann defence game which lasted 73 moves, Vaibhav drew with top seed Deep Sengupta to take his tally to six points while S. Nitin set aside his sixth round debacle against Vaibhav to beat national subjunior champion Sankalp Gupta in 49 moves arrived out of French defence game.
With just two rounds left in the ` 10 lakh championship, national champion M. R. Lalith Babu, Sankalp Gupta, Debashis Das, P. Karthikeyan and Nubairshah Shaikh share the second spot on 5.5 points apiece.
Lalith Babu defeated former national champion G. Akash while Debashis got the better of IM K. Ratnakaran.
Karthikeyan defeated IM Kobese Watu of South Africa while Nubairshah put it across state mate Sammed Shete.
In the women’s section, Tania Sachev led the table with another fighting performance. The Delhi player took her tally to an impressive five points following a draw with GM Deepan Chakkravarthy.
Earlier in the sixth round, Suri halted the dream run of IM S. Nitin, who had kept a clean slate till then.
Akash got the better of Grandmaster Debashis Das while Sankalp Gupta defeated the higher seeded Karthik Venkataraman.