Abhijeet Gupta punished an overly passive Koustav Chatterjee in 32 moves to emerge as the leader after five rounds of the MPL National Chess Championship here on Monday.
On a day when seven of the top eight boards witnessed decisive battles, Abhijeet’s sustained pressure saw Koustav resign after facing the loss of a knight in this battle of two overnight leaders.
Top seed S. P. Sethuraman stayed half a point behind Abhijeet (5 points) after nailing Deep Sengupta in 51 moves, in a rook-and-pawn endgame. N. R. Visakh, Aronyak Ghosh and Mitrabha Guha were also at 4.5 points.
Fifth seed Visakh ended the unbeaten run and the valiant resistance of Vedant Panesar in 83 moves. Similarly, Aronyak played to his massive rating superiority over Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh to win in 54 moves.
Seasoned campaigner Neeloptal Das resigned in 49 moves against fellow-Grandmaster Mitrabha after failing to find a way to stop the youngster’s queening pawn.
Young Kushagra Mohan was not intimidated by GM P. Iniyan and walked away with a creditable draw in 79 moves. In fact, it was Kushagra who searched for an unlikely victory for the last 27 moves after the last pawn capture, although his rook did not prove superior to Iniyan’s dark-squared bishop.
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