Asian Chess C’ships: Murali Karthikeyan, Pa Iniyan share lead after round-4

Indian Grandmasters Murali Karthikeyan and P Iniyan registered wins to share joint lead with Iranian Bardiya Daneshvar and Russia’s Aleksey Grebnev after the end of the fourth round of the Asian Individual Chess Championship in Al Ain, UAE, on Saturday.

Murali beat Sina Movahed of Iran, whereas Iniyan got the better of Meng Yihan of China. Meanwhile, Pranav Anand played a draw against top seed Nihal Sarin in an all Indian faceoff.

Sarin, Pranav, Prraneeth, Srihari, and Harshavardhan have all accumulated three points each.

In the women’s section, Srija Sheshadri is the best-performing Indian with 3.5/4 points after four rounds. In the fourth round, Srija drew with Russia’s Olga Girya.

Mungunzul Bat-Erdene of Mongolia and Anastasia Bodnaruk of Russia emerged as co-leaders with a perfect record of 4/4 at the competition.

As many as 18-Indian Grandmasters are in action in the strongest Asian championship, with top 10 places reserved for the next Chess World Cup.

Results:

Men

Pranav Anand draw Nihal Sarin

Murali Karthikeyan beat Sina Movahed

A R Saleh Salem draw Prraneeth Vuppala

Xu Xiangyu draws L R Srihari

Yang Zilong draw M Pranesh

P Iniyan beat Meng Yihan

A R Ilamparthi lost to Aleksey Grebnev

Siddharth Jagadeesh lost to Abhimanyu Puranik

Surya Shekhar Ganguly draw Ivan Rozum

G B Harshavardhan beat Mikahil Demidov

Women

Olgas Girya draw Srija Seshadri

Vantika Agrawal draw Liya Kurmangaliyeva

P V Nandhidhaa beat Melika Mohammadi

Rakshitta Ravi beat Nisha Mohota

Arshiya Das beat Munkhzul Turmunkh

B Savitha Shri beat Galina Mikheeva