Commonwealth Chess Championship: Nitin takes lead, Joshi stuns Thej

With five of the other overnight leaders engaged in drawn encounters, Nitin remained the only player with four points – half a point ahead of 12 players.

International Master S. Nitin led the field with a perfect score on Friday.

International Master S. Nitin produced a neat finish to his top-board encounter against fifth seeded Grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna and the 42-move triumph made him the leader after four rounds of the Commonwealth chess championship on Friday.
 

With five of the other overnight leaders engaged in drawn encounters, Nitin remained the only player with four points – half a point ahead of 12 players.
 

Nitin, a Railway employee from Chennai, gained from Vishnu’s decision to give up a rook for a bishop in the middle game of this Sicilian game.

Nitin, seeded 14th, tightened the noose by mobilising his queen and the rook-pair. Vishnu, staring at the loss of a bishop leading to checkmate, resigned at once.
 

In the other surprise results, veteran Pravin Thipsay held top seed Deep Sengupta in 43 moves, G. B. Joshi stunned Karnataka’s only GM M. S. Thej Kumar in 57 moves, R. R. Laxman drew with sixth seed Debashis Das, C. H. Meghna proved equal to V. Karthik before Deepan Chakkravarthy crashed to a tearful loss to Sankalp Gupta.