New Delhi: Three Orissa players WGM Kiran Manisha Mohanty, IM Padmini Rout and Rajesh Nayak are sharing the joint fourth spot with three points each after the completion of the fifth round of the Commonwealth Chess Championship here Thursday.
In the fifth round Kiran got the better of Pankaj Sindhu of Haryana. Padmini checkmated Utsab Chatterjee and Rajesh prevailed over Subham Shukla of RSPB.
Grandmaster and defending champion Abhijeet Gupta roared back to contention with back-to-back victories in the fourth and fifth rounds. After a rather easy draw with Nubairshah Sheikh in the third round, Gupta came up with outstanding performance on the fourth day that had double rounds.
Earlier in the morning, Grandmaster Niaz Murshed did not prove any match for the wily Indian while the peaceful intentions of GM Ankit Rajpara also received a jolt in the fifth round.
Grandmasters Swapnil Dhopade and Vaibhav Suri played out a draw on the top board and these two were joined by Gupta, Aravindh Chithambaram and Tejas Bakre in the lead on 4.5 points out of a possible five.
Chithambaram was in his elements as he halted the dream run of K Priyanka while Tejas Bakre played a fine game with black pieces to beat fellow Indian GM Sahaj Grover.
Gupta was up against the Fianchetto variation in the Grunfeld defense and chose a solid setup giving little away to Rajpara. The early phase of the game saw Gupta spurning an unconditional draw offer and the defending champion was in full flow on the queen side to hand Rajpara his first defeat in the event.
Chithambaram went for the Sicilian Dragon as black and was in top shape while Bakre capitalised on some middle game errors from Grover to register his fourth victory.
