Aurangabad: Aswin Jayaram stunned defending champion Parimarjan Negi and Tamil Nadu player S. P. Sethuraman expectedly stopped Vikramaditya Kulkarni to share the lead with three points after as many rounds of the 49th National chess championship at the MIT campus here on Tuesday.

Playing with black pieces, Aswin launched a fierce attack on Negi's castled king on the queen's side and eventually proved stronger in 53 moves. Sethuraman had a much easier time against Kulkarni in 45 moves.

Vidit Gujarathi scored over former champion and veteran Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay.

The results (third round): Deepan Chakkravarthy (2.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (2.5); Vikramaditya Kulkarni (2) lost to S. P. Sethuraman (3); Parimarjan Negi (1.5) lost to Aswin Jayaram (3); G. N. Gopal (2) drew with M. R. Venkatesh (2); M. R. Lalith Babu (2) drew with Deep Sengupta (2); B. Adhiban (2) drew with Neelotpal Das (2); Vidit Gujarathi (2.5) bt Pravin Thipsay (1.5); Himanshu Sharma (1.5) lost to Tejas Bakre (2.5); Abhijit Kunte (2.5) bt Shyam Nikhil (1.5); P. Konguvel (1) lost to S. Arun Prasad (2); S. Kidambi (1.5) drew with Girish Koushik (1.5); Shyam Sundar (2) bt Atanu Lahiri (1); R. R. Laxman (2) bt Padmini Rout (1); S. Satyapragyan (2) bt Swati Ghate (1); N. Srinath (1) lost to Swapnil Dhopade (2); G. Akash (1) lost to Sriram Jha (2); P. Karthikeyan (1) lost to Varugeese Koshy (2); B. T. Murali Krishnan (1) drew with K. Ratnakaran (1); Rahul Sangma (1) drew with Anup Deshmukh (1); Dinesh Kumar (1) drew with Saptarshi Roy (1); Diptayan Ghosh (1.5) bt Suvrajit Saha (0.5); S. Ravi Teja (0.5) lost to Aditya Udeshi (1.5); Soumya Swaminathan (1) bt Arjun Tiwari (0); N. Sudhakar Babu (0.5) drew with C. R. G. Krishna (0.5); Shashikant Kutwal (1) bye .