Nitin Senthilvel, the International Master of India took the joint lead with Armenian GM Vahe Baghdasaryan with five points after the fifth round of the 13th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament 2022 on Wednesday.
Grand Masters Boris Savchenko (Russia), the top-seed, Tran Tuan Minh (Vietnam), Alexei Federov and Kirill Stupak (both Belarus) apart from IM Srijit Paul (India), IM Abdyjapar Asyl (Kyrgyzstan) and B Vignesh are half a point behind the leaders with 4.5 points.
Chennai lad Vignesh continued his fine run with a win over Grandmaster R R Laxman in the fifth round on Thursday. With his third successive GM opponent, Vignesh has logged in 2.5/3 having defeated GM Nguyen Van Huy (Vietnam) and drawn with GM Fedorov Alexei (Belarus) in the previous two rounds.
The field for the 275-player 10-round Swiss tournament includes 11 Grandmasters and 14 International Masters among 36 titled players.
The tournament carries a total prize money of Rs 15 lakh.
Results: Round 5 (Indians unless specified) : Srijit Paul (4.5) drew with Boris Savchenko (Russia) 4.5, Kirill Stupak (Belarus) 4.5 drew with Abdyjapar Asyl (Kyrgyzstan) 4.5, Nitin S (5) beat Jubin Jimmy (4), Baghdasaryan Vahe (Armenia) 5 beat L R Srihari (4), Alexei Federov (4.5) beat Ravichandran Siddharth (3.5), Aaryan Varshney (3.5) lost to Tran Tuan Minh (Vietnam) 4.5, Murali Krishnan B T (4.0) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy J (4), Harshit Pawar (4) drew with Ajay Karthikeyan (4), Rajesh V A V (4.0) drew with P Saravana Krishnan (4), R R Laxman 3 lost to B Vignesh (4.5), Nguyen Duc Hoa (Vietnam) 4 beat Jani Kushal R.
(Inputs PTI)
