Five players in joint lead at National Chess Championship

Five players, including Arjun Erigaisi and D Gukesh, are in the lead after the fifth round of the 58th Senior National Chess Championship on Sunday.

Apart from Erigaisi and Gukesh, Abhijeet Gupta, M R Lalith Babu and Kaustav Chatterjee have 4.5 points after five rounds and they are followed in second place by a bunch of players, including top-seed B Adhiban, on four points.

In the fifth round matches, Erigaisi and Gukesh settled for a draw while Lalith Babu beat Aryan Chopra and Abhijeet Gupta defeated Aditya Mittal. Chatterjee, who had held Adhiban to a draw in the third round, put it across Karthikeyan Murali to join the four others at the top.

Important results:

5th round:

D Gukesh drew with Arjun Erigaisi,

M R Lalith Babu beat Aryan Chopra,

Adhiban drew Harsha Bharathakoti,

Abhijeet Gupta beat Aditya Mittal,

Mitraba Guha drew with Aronyak Ghosh,

Kaustav Chatterjee beat Karthikeyan Murali,

Aravindh Chithambaram beat S Harshad,

M Siddhanth drew with Abhimanyu Puranik.