S.P. Sethuraman took his time to convert his chance into a well-crafted 94-move victory over fellow GM Deep Sengupta to emerge as the leader with six points after as many rounds of the National chess championship here on Monday.
With eighth seed Mithrabha Guha holding second seed Abhimanyu Puranik to a 43-move draw on the top board, Sethuraman knew a victory would give him a half-point lead and encashed on his two-pawn advantage.
The results (sixth round): Abhimanyu Puranik (5.5) drew with Mithrabha Guha (5.5); Deep Sengupta (5) lost to S.P. Sethuraman (6); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (5) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy (5); M. R.Venkatesh (5) drew with Diptayan Ghosh (5); Vishnu Prasanna (4.5) lost to Aronyak Ghosh (5.5); Kolla Bhaavan (5) drew with P. Shyaamnikhil (5); Uktal Ranjan Sahoo (4) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (5); N. R. Visakh (5) bt Dinesh Sharma (4).
C. Praveen Kumar (4) lost to P. Iniyan (5); Apoorv Kamble (5) bt Sayantan Das (4); G. Akash (4.5) drew with Sandip Nagare (4.5); Neelash Saha (5) bt Vivaan Shah (4); Anuj Shrivatri (5) bt Yash Bharadia (4); Indrajeet Mahindrakar (4) lost to Sidhant Mohapatra (5); L.R. Srihari (5) bt P. Supreetha (4); Harshit Pawar (4.5) drew with C.R.G. Krishna (4.5); Shrayan Majumder (4) lost to Mehar Chinna Reddy (5); S. Nitin (3.5) lost to Bhoopnath Yadav (5).
