Abhijeet Gupta, Lalith Babu share lead in Parsvnath Chess

Indian Grandmasters Abhijeet Gupta and M R Lalith Babu emerged as joint leaders after winning their respective fourth-round matches at the 12th Parsvnath Delhi International Grandmasters Chess Tournament here today.
Abhijeet Gupta showcased his superior preparation to outwit M R Venkatesh out of a Catalan opening. Playing white, Gupta repeated an earlier game played between former world champions V Anand and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and had an ace up his sleeves as he came up with a home-cooked improvement.
Venkatesh landed himself in a worse endgame soon after and the rest was easy for Commonwealth champion Gupta who drove home the full point without much ado.

Lalith babu won in contrasting fashion with his white pieces but was no less impressive in his assault against Ukraine's Eldar Gasanov. Out of a Queen pawn opening, the Indian came up with a well-judged exchange sacrifice and his handful of pawns in the centre were enough to fetch the fourth victory in as many games.
As many as seven players trail the two leaders by half a point. They are Grandmasters Merab Gagunashvili of Georgia, Raset Ziatdinov of United States, Deep Sengupta, Deepan Chakkravarthy, International Masters Akshat Khamparia, Ankit Rajppara and young gun Nr Vignesh.
Akshat Khamparia provided the shocker of the day defeating Grandmaster Tornike Sanikidze of Georgia while Vigensh held his fort together to hold Gagunashvili to an easy draw.

Earlier in the third round, Abhijeet Gupta had put it across Asian junior champion N Srinath in another fine display of positional chess. From the black side of a Sicilian Classical, Gupta reached a slightly better heavy pieces endgame wherein Srinath blundered to go down tamely.