India notched confidence-boosting wins in both the men's and women's section to stay in joint lead with perfect 10 points from 5 rounds at the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest on Sunday.
Backed by the two in-form players in D Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi, Indian men scored the necessary points to beat Azerbaijan. In the women's section, India beat Kazakhstan despite D Harika suffering a shock loss to give up an early lead. But the rest of team did enough to ensure that their clean slate remains.
Open Section:
Gukesh, the World Championship challenger, and Arjun, who is on a winning streak in Budapest, continued their good form as they beat Aydin Sulemanli and Rauf Mamedov respectively with their white pieces in quick time.
Praggnanandhaa played out a draw on board two again Nijat Abasov, but that ensured an Indian victory irrespective of the result of Vidit Gujrathi, who ended up drawing an exciting game against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
This ensured that India remained on top and were joined by Vietnam, China, and Hungary.
India will next face the hosts Hungary, who are also on 10 points, which means that one of these teams will lose their perfect start to the Olympiad.
Women's section
Grandmaster D Harika was engaged in a rollercoaster match, going down in the end despite being better for most of the game against Bibisara Assaubayeva. This could have put India under early pressure but , Vantika Agarwal yet again played the anchor and won a clean game with white pieces against Alua Nurman.
Divya Deshmukh then split points with Xeniya Balabayeva but R Vaishali's win over Meruert Kamalidenova sealed the deal for India.
India are now joint lead with Armenia and Mongolia, both of whom caused upsets by beating China and USA respectively.
India will be playing Armenia - who will be high on their terrific win over China - in the next round, which will again see one team losing their perfect start.
(With inputs from PTI)