Experiencing contrasting emotions, Arjun Erigaisi and D. Gukesh retained their half-point lead after the seventh round of the MPL National chess championship here on Monday.
Breaking away from the overnight five-man leading pack with varying degrees of difficulty in the sixth round in the afternoon, Arjun and Gukesh settled for draws to reach six points.
Facing Arjun, Aryan Chopra gave nothing away in their 54-move draw. On the other hand, Gukesh tossed away a slight edge against the two-time defending champion Aravindh Chithambaram following a blunder in time-pressure. Just when it seemed Aravindh was tightening his grip, Gukesh managed to elude the grasp with some fine defence and escaped with a 69-move draw.
Costly blunder
In an exciting sixth round, Arjun defeated Abhijeet Gupta in a 46-move thriller. The decisive turn came when the former National champion blundered on the 40th move and soon lost.
Gukesh needed 61 moves to end the giant-killing spree of Koustav Chatterjee, who blundered on the 52nd move.
Top seed B. Adhiban joined nine others at 5.5 points after beating Neelash Saha. Others in the second score group are Aryan Chopra, Aravindh Chithambaram, P. Iniyan, M. R. Lalith Babu, N. R. Vishakh, Sayantan Das and V. Pranav, Deep Sengupta and Mitrabha Guha.
Important results: Seventh round: Aryan Chopra (5.5) drew with Arjun Erigaisi (6); D. Gukesh (6) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (5.5); P. Iniyan (5.5) drew with M. R. Lalith Babu (5.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5) drew with Mitrabha Guha (5.5); B. Adhiban (5.5) bt Neelash Saha (4.5); Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh (4.5) lost to Deep Sengupta (5.5); N. R. Visakh (5.5) bt Utsab Chatterjee (4.5); Sayantan Das (5.5) bt Harsha Bharathakoti (4.5); R. R. Laxman (5) drew with Aditya Mittal (5); V. Pranav (5.5) bt Anustoop Biswas (4.5); Sambit Panda (5) drew with Koustav Chatterjee (5); S. Nitin (5) drew with Ravi Teja (4.5).
Sixth round: Arjun bt Abhijeet; Koustav lost to Gukesh; Lalith drew with Adhiban; Aravindh bt Aronyak Ghosh (4); Ravi lost to Aryan; Deep drew with Sayantan; Shreyansh Daklia (4) lost to Iniyan; Mitrabha bt N. R. Vignesh (4); Harsha drew with Laxman; Abhimanyu Puranik (4) drew with Sambit Panda.
