National Chess Championship 2018: Aravindh Chithambaram storms into final round as sole leader
The HinduA series of decisive battles, involving title-aspirants, was in keeping with the expectations from the penultimate round. When the dust settled after some fierce fights on the top four boards, Aravindh Chithambaram emerged as the only leader heading into Tuesday’s final round of the National chess championship here. Aravindh, last year’s runner, overpowered a resurgent Murali Karthikeyan, seeded two, and raised his tally to 9.5 points from 12 rounds. Previous round's report: Aravindh stops Suri, rejoins Stany in lead Having already beaten top seed Abhijeet Gupta and third seed Suri, fourth seed Aravindh’s latest victory meant he scored over all three higher seeds in the 13-round competition. Soon Krishna found a tactical shot, gained two more pawns following the exchange of rooks and his knight for Stany’s bishop.