Ivan Rozum of Russia shot into the lead with five points from as many rounds, defeating city-based Deep Sengupta in the LIC third International Grandmaster chess tournament here today.
Narayanan Srinath with black pieces scored a crucial victory over former World Junior champion Abhijeet Gupta to reach 4.5 points, joined by Farrukh Amonatov (Tajikistan) and Adam Tukhaev (Ukraine) to closely follow the leader. They are followed by a large group of 15 players on four points.
Top seeded Nigel Short and National Champion M R Lalith Babu traded pieces in regular intervals to draw their game on the second table to be on four points apiece.
Rozum was at his impressive best showing an attractive positional style of play exerting pressure on opponents from simple looking positions.
In such a game, Sengupta surprisingly weakened his pawn structure on the 35th move and blundered away an exchange on the 49th move to lose the game.
Local lad Rajdeep Sarkar was impressive to hold a draw against Shyam Sundar to move to 3.5 points, while prodigious talent Nihal Sarin came back into reckoning by defeating Arjun Kalyan to move to four points.
Abhijeet Gupta and Srinath Narayanan were involved in a topsy-turvy tactical battle, where the position always seemed to have dynamic equality.
But Gupta's play weakened around the third hour of play and he blundered a piece on the 44th move.
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