New Delhi: Grandmaster P Magesh Chandran continued with his winning ways and outplayed International Master Kirill Kuderinov of Kazakhstan to emerge as sole leader on 4.5 points after the end of the fifth round of the premier section of 11th Parsvnath International Chess Festival in progress here.
 
After accounting for second seed Aleksej Alexandrov of Belarus in the previous round it was another excellent result for Chandran who played some high quality chess to remain at the top at the half way stage of this 1.1 million rupees prize money tournament.
 
Grandmaster M R Lalith Babu salvaged some anxious moments in the endgame against Lu Shanglei of China before he could split the point. Shanglei, Babu, Vaibhav Suri, Ankit Rajpara and Anup Deshmukh share the second spot jointly on four points each.
 
In the biggest upset of the day International Master Anup Deshmukh defeated Grandmaster Sahaj Grover. In full swing here, Deshmukh, formerly a member of Indian team, played a fine attacking game to outwit Grover from a French defense game.
 
IN another upset result, Ankit Rajpara came good against Grandmaster-in-waiting M Shyam Sundar. It was a long drawn endgame with an extra pawn for Rajpara who did not falter and converted it in to a full point after fighting for over 80 moves.
 
Top seed Abhijeet Gupta was yet again held a draw in the tournament. International Master Ashwin Jayaram played the white side of a French defense and gave no chances whatsoever to the highest rated player in the tournament.
 
With just three decisive games out of the top ten boards the tournament is turning out to be tough for the fancied players too. Alexandrov could not quite recover from the loss yesterday and was again held to a draw by Saptarshi Roy.
 
Amongst the youngsters, Murali Karthikeyan and S L Narayanan stayed in the hunt for their respective norms after drawing with Grandmasters B Adhiban and Abhijeet Kunte respectively. The other talent Arvindh Chthambaram however will need to win some games now after he lost to V Vishnu Prasanna in the fifth round.
 
Meanwhile, Sushant Bannerjee deservingly won the Category ‘B’ tournament of the festival that ended today. Bannerjee logged eight points out of a possible nine to pocket Rs. 100000/- winner’s purse out of a total prize pool of Rs. 350000/-.
 
Category ‘A’ Important Results (Round-5) (Indian’s otherwise specified) :-  GM P Magesh Chandran (4.5) beat IM Kirill Kuderinov of Kazakhstan (3.5); GM Lalith Babu MR (4) drew with GM Lu Shanglei of China (4); IM Ashwin Jayaram (3.5) drew with GM Abhijeet Gupta (3.5); IM Saptarshi Roy (3.5) drew with GM Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus (3.5); GM Adhiban B (3.5) drew with  Karthikeyan Murali (3.5); IM Rathnakaran K (3.5) drew with GM Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan (3.5); GM Vaibhav Suri (4) beat Ram S Krishanan (3); IM Ankit R Rajpara (4) beat IM Shyam Sundar M (3); FM Shardul Gagare (3.5) drew with IM Swapnil D Dhopade (3.5); GM Murshed Niaz of Bangladesh (3.5) drew with GM Laxman R R (3.5); IM Anup Deshmukh (4) beat GM Sahaj Grover (3); Narayanan S L (3.5) drew with GM Abhijit Kunte (3); GM Henrik Teske of Germany (3.5) beat IM Himanshu Sharma (2.5); Wan Yunguo of China (3.5) beat IM Aditya Udeshi (2.5); FM Anurag Mhamal (2.5) lost to GM Czebe Attila of Hungary (3.5).
 
Category-B Final Standings :-  (1) Sushant Banerjee (2) Santanu Borpatra Gohain (3) Puneet Jaiswal  (4) Laltu Chattarjee (5) Maulik Raval (6) Harihara Sudan (7) Lakshmi Narayanan M V  (8) Dhanabir Singh (9) Karthik V  (10) Anilkumar O T (11) Vinoth Kumar M  (12) Bavan Kumar  (13) Ankit Gajwa  (14) Amir Asim  (15) Suresh Kumar T J (16) Hornell Colin  (17) Santoshkashyap  (18) Joy Lazar  (19) Prasanna S  (20) Santu Mondal.