After seven rounds of the RTU Open in Riga on Friday, sixth-seeded S.L. Narayanan remained in the championship battle, beating Serbian Luka Budisavljevic and sharing a 6-point lead with Latvian Igor Kovalenko.
After rounds, Arjun Erigaisi and Arjun Kalyan (5.5 points each) tied for third with the other eight. Aravindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin, D. Gukesh, Pranav Anand and Murali Karthikeyan (5 each) tied for 13th place.
Leading results (involving Indians): Seventh round: Igor Kovalenko (Lat, 6) bt D. Gukesh (5); S.L. Narayanan (6) bt Luka Budisavljevic (Srb, 5); Arjun Kalyan (5.5) drew with Aram Hakobyan (Arm, 5.5); M. Karthikeyan (5) drew with Arjun Erigaisi (5.5); Nihal Sarin (5) drew with Grigor Grigorov (Bul, 5); Martin Stukan (Rus, 5) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (5); Tomas Laurusas (Ltu, 5.5) bt Aditya Mittal (4.5); Pranav Anand (5) drew with R. Praggnanandhaa (4.5).