Narayanan joins leaders in Chess Championships

Chennai - S.L. Narayanan, the 14-year old from Kerala, scored over Grandmaster M.R. Venkatesh in the 10th and penultimate round of the Apollo Engineering College Commonwealth Chess Championships here Friday to join the leaders.

Narayanan, with 8.5 points, shared the lead with top seed Sergei Tiviakov (Netherlands), M.R. Lalith Babu and P Karthikeyan (both India).

Half a point behind the leaders at 8.0 points were Marat Dzhumaev (Uzbekistan), S.P. Sethuraman and M. Shyam Sundar (both India).

Scoring his sixth win in a row, Narayanan has thus far scalped his third Grandmaster in this event after Adhiban, Oleksienko Mikhailo and Venkatesh.

Meanwhile, Chandika Divyasree made her second Woman International Master Norm despite a loss to Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy.

The results (Indians unless specified) – Round 10: P Karthikeyan 8.5 drew with Sergei Tiviakov (Ned) 8.5, G Akash 7.5 lost to M R Lalith Babu 8.5, S L Narayanan 8.5 bt M R Venkatesh 7.5, Himanshu Sharma 7.5 drew with Lintchevski Daniil (Rus) 7.5, Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) 8 bt Rolando Nolte (Phi) 7, SP Sethuraman 8 bt Swayams Mishra 7, M Shyam Sundar 8 bt CRG Krishna 7, Fominyh Alexander (Rus) 7.5 drew with Ram S Krishnan 7.5, Adly Ahmed (Egy) 7.5 bt S Nitin 6.5, B Adhiban 7.5 bt VAV Rajesh 6.5, Oleksienko Mikhailo (Ukr) 7.5 bt Nisha Mohota 6.5, Garcia Jan Emmanuel (Phi) 7 drew with Mark Paragua (Phi) 7, Sahaj Grover 7 drew with Ikeda Junta (Aus) 7, Senador Emmanuel (Phi) 7 drew with Ashwin Jayaram 7.