Having done all the hard work in the first seven rounds, Abhijeet Gupta collected half a point in quick time in the eighth and penultimate round of the Commonwealth Chess Championship here on Monday.
It took only 11 moves, spread over 10 minutes, for Abhijeet and fellow-Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy to enact a friendly yet farcical draw. Abhijeet now leads with 7.5 points, half a point ahead of Arghyadip Das who surprised Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte.
On Tuesday, in the clash to decide the title, Arghyadip gets to play with white pieces for a rare sixth time — third in succession — against Abhijeet.
With six of the top-eight boards throwing up draws, Arghyadip found himself in the second spot. Former champion M.R. Lalith Babu, the conqueror of C.R.G. Krishna, joined Deepan, Ravi Teja, Siva Mahadevan and G. Akash in the third spot with 6.5 points.
Among the ladies, National champion Padmini Rout drew with N.R. Vignesh to reach six points. Joining her in the lead were the Subbaraman sisters — former National champions Vijayalakshmi and Meenakshi.
Leading final-round pairings: Arghyadip-Abhijeet; Teja-Babu; Akash-Deepan; Siva-Karthikeyan; Vignesh-Deep.
The results (eighth round): Abhijeet Gupta (7.5) drew with Deepan Chakkravarthy (6.5); Arghyadip Das (7) bt Abhijit Kunte (6); S. L. Narayanan (6) drew with Ravi Teja (6.5); Deep Sengupta (6) drew with Ramnath Bhuvanesh (6); M. R. Lalith Babu (6.5) bt C. R. G. Krishna (5.5); Sriram Jha (6) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (6); S. Nitin (6) drew with Ziaur Rahman (Ban, 6); Padmini Rout (6) drew with N. R. Vignesh (6); K. Ratnakaran (5.5) lost to Siva Mahadevan (6.5); Sahaj Grover (5) lost to G. Akash (6.5); M. Karthikeyan (6) bt Hemant Sharma (5); K. Praneeth Surya (5) lost to Ankit Rajpara (6); Niaz Murshed (Ban, 6) bt Donovan van den Heever (RSA, 5); Arpan Das (5) lost to Mohammad Minhazuddin (Ban, 6); Krishna Teja (5.5) drew with Himanshu Sharma (5.5).
