Chennai: Karuppiah Narayanan, a 15-year old class eleven student of Muthiah Alagappa Matriculation School, Kottaiyur in remote Tamil Nadu shocked International Master T.S. Ravi to move to joint lead at the half-way mark of the 6th Adyar Times chess tournament being played here on Tuesday.

Narayanan is on 4.5 points after five rounds and shares the lead with D.P. Singh, Ram S. Krishnan, S. Nitin, R.R. Laxman, Shyam Nikhil and R. Ashwath. Five rounds remain to be played.

Narayanan played the Caro-Kann defence with black and used white's poor development to conduct an attack and win in 35 moves. Narayanan said he was trained by O.T. Anil Kumar of Kozhikode.Ram S. Krishnan had the top seed Diwakar Prasad Singh in trouble despite playing with the black pieces in a Catalan opening. The Chennai player offered a draw on move 28 which was declined by Singh. When his position worsened, Singh however agreed to take the draw seven moves later.

On the second table, former National `A' player Shantharam played a 43-move draw against the reigning Asian Under-14 champion S. Nitin in a bishop ending. Important results: Fifth round: Ram S. Krishnan 4.5 drew with D.P. Singh 4.5, K.V. Shantharam 4 drew with S. Nitin 4.5, D. Das 3.5 lost to Laxman 4.5, Arun Karthik 4 drew with Sudhakar Babu 4, Sa Kannan 3.5 lost to Shyam Nikhil 4.5, Shiva Murugan 3.5 lost to R. Ashwath 4.5, T.S. Ravi 3 lost to K. Narayanan 4.5, S. Samson 3 lost to Murugan 4, O.T. Anilkumar 4 bt M. Natarajan 3.

Fourth round: D.P. Singh bt Vinoth Kumar, S. Nitin bt T.S. Ravi, Shyam Nikhil drew with D. Das, K. Narayanan drew with Shantharam, Ram S. Krishnan bt J. Sridhar, Laxman bt Hari Balu, Murugan drew with Sagar Shah, Sudhakar Babu bt Uthra, Ashwath bt D. Dutta, V.Hariharan drew with A.K. Mithran. — Arvind Aaron

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