Five players, including defending champion Arvind Chidambaram, took a joint lead of 6.5 points after the 8th round of the 58th Senior National Chess Championship held in Kanpur on Tuesday.

In the 8th round, Grandmaster P Iniyan of Tamil Nadu defeated top seed B Adhiban, while International Master P Pranav defeated veteran Grandmaster Deep Sengupta. The win saw Iniyan and Pranav rise to the top along with Grandmaster Arjun Erigasi and D Gukesh. In another match, Chidambaram defeated Sayantan Das of Railways.

Arigesi and Gukesh, who were joint toppers on Monday, played out a draw against Visakh and Lalit Babu. Which helped Inian, Pranav and Chidambaram to rise to the top. In other matches, Grandmaster Mitrabh Guha and Aryan Guha shared the points. Abhijeet Gupta has defeated S Nitin of Railways.

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