World's second youngest Grandmaster ever Parimarjan Negi played out a draw with Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son of Vietnam in the fifth round of the Young Grandmasters tournament, apart of the 43rd Biel chess festival.
After three losses in the first three rounds and a draw in the fourth, it was the second successive draw by the Indian who took his tally to one point from the first five rounds.
Fabiano Caruana of Italy shot in to sole lead at the expense of overnight leader Wesley Soof Philippines.
With 3.5 points in his kitty, Caruana is a half point ahead of So, Russian duo of Evgeny Tomashevsky and Dmitry Andreikin and Maxim Rodshtein of Israel who all have 3 points apiece.
With five draws from as many games, top seed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France and Truong Son have 2.5 points each while Anish Giri of Holland closely follow them a half point behind. English David Howell comes next on 1.5 while Parimarjan is at the bottom of the tables with four rounds still remaining in the category -17 event.
The day produced two decisive games and the other winner besides Caruana was Rodshtein who outplayed Anish Giri.
Parimarjan played a fairly quick draw with Truong Son who played the black side of a French defense. Parimarjan employed the Winawer variation and three minor pieces quickly changed hands.
To his credit, Son obtained a rock-solid position that was very hard to crack and Parimarjan proposed the draw after playing his 22nd move that was accepted.
Caruana played a gem of a game to beat So. It was a Slav defense by the Filipino that gave an optical fine position. Caruana cashed in on his Bishop pair to exert pressure on both flanks and So lost a pieces in exchange for a couple of pawns.
The Italian who is living in Switzerland these days, made no mistakes thereafter and clinched the issue setting up a brilliant checkmate web.
Rodshtein defeated Anish Giri in a Catalan opening game.
Giri was off-colour for once and Rodshtein took full advantage of that. The Israeli won a pawn and later sacrificed his queen for two pieces to force matters in 39 moves.
Tomashevsky continued with the dubioud distinction of playing least number of moves as he played out a draw in just 16 moves against David Howell while Andreikin fought hard to salvage a half point against Vachier-Lagrave.
