Indian Grandmaster Harsha Bharathakoti beat Koustav Chatterjee in the fifth round to move into sole lead with 4.5 points in the Open section of the Asian Continental Chess championship on Sunday.
Top-seed R Praggnanandhaa, who drew with compatriot Leon Luke Mendonca in round five, is among seven players in second place with four points.
The others on four points are Mendonca, Karthikeyan Murali, S P Sethuraman, B Adhiban, Maksat Atabayev (Turkmenistan) and Shamsiddhin Vokhidov (Uzbekistan).
Bharathakoti scored over Chatterjee in 49 moves to move ahead of the field. He has scored four straight wins after a draw in the opening round against Enamul Hossain (Bangladesh).
In other results, Atabayev shared honours with Atabayev while GMs S L Narayanan and M Shyam Sundar settled for a draw.
Sethuraman and Adhiban were victors over R Rithvik Raja and Jaykumar Shete Sammed respectively.
In the women’s event, Indian players Priyanka Nuttaki and P V Nandhidhaa are in joint lead with 4.5 points from five rounds.
Nandhidhaa posted a win over Thi Kim Phung Vo (Vietnam) and Nuttaki defeated the experienced Soumya Swaminathan.
Nilufar Yakubbaeva (Uzbekistan) is in second place with four points, half a point behind the two Indians, after a win over Indian Sania Salonika, who had enjoyed wins over no.2 seed Devaademberel Nomin-Erdene of Mongolia and Bhakti Kulkarni in the previous rounds.
Top-seeded Indian Tania Sachdev, meanwhile, continued to struggle as she was held to a draw by Thi Mai Hung (Vietnam) to leave her on three points.
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