Top seed Sergei Tiviakov of The Netherlands moved into joint lead scoring over second seed Ahmed Adly of Egypt in the ninth round of the Apollo Engineering College Commonwealth Chess Championships at Multipurpose Indoor Stadium here on Thursday.
Tiviakov and Karthikeyan lead the pack with eight points and were followed half a point behind on 7.5 points by M R Venkatesh, M R Lalith Babu, S L Narayanan, G Akash (all India) respectively.
The top board game was fought on an even keel, before Venkatesh gave back his exchange and picked up the half point against in-form Karthikeyan.
The second board game against the top two seeds saw Sergei Tiviakov firing on all cylinders against Adly. The Closed Sicilian game went in favour of Tiviakov after 49 moves. Young S L Narayanan kept his good form scoring an upset win over Ukraine GM Mikhailo Oleksienko in 39 moves. India’s Kathmale Sameer made his IM Norm holding GM Arun Prasad to a draw. The nine-game IM Norm was the second norm in the event, adding to the one Ram S Krishnan made in the previous round.
Results Round 9 (Indians unless specified): M R Venkatesh 7.5 drew with P Karthikeyan 8, Sergei Tiviakov (Ned) 8 bt Ahmed Adly (Egy) 6.5, Rolando Nolte (Phi) 7 drew with D Lintchevski (Rus) 7, S L Narayanan 7.5 bt Mikhailo Oleksienko (Ukr) 6.5, M R Lalith Babu 7.5 bt R R Laxman 6.5, G Akash 7.5 bt S Grover 6.5, Ram S Krishnan 7 drew with M Shyam Sundar 7, N Das 6.5 drew with CRG Krishna 6.5, M Paragua (Phi) 6.5 drew with A Khamparia 6.5, Karthikeyan Murali 6 lost to Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb) 7.