Wendell Meusa maintained a slim lead in the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) Keishar’s/FIDE qualifying tournament following play on Wednesday.

Meusa leads his nearest rival Taffin Khan by half of a point following their drawn encounter in Wednesday’s fifth round.

In the battle between the top of the table competitors, Khan clearly had the advantage winding down to the end game with five pawns and a bishop versus Meusa’s one pawn and two bishops.

He was however, unable to convert the one pawn advantage to a win due to a strong resistance from Meusa who handled his two bishops’ well. In other results, Ronuel Greenidge defeated Errol Tiwari; Shiv Nandalall defeated David Khan; Ron Motilall held Loris Nathoo to a draw; Learie Webster got past Dennis Dillon; Frankie Farley got the better of Michael Pereira; Sham Khan defeated Ryan Singh and Raan Motilall got past Alex Joseph.  In the points standing after five rounds Meusa is on four and a half points while Khan, Nandalall and Greenidge are on four points each.

Tiwari, Nathoo, David Khan, Farley and Webster follow with three points each while Sham Khan, Ron and Raan Motilall are on two and a half points each and Pereira, Ryan Singh, Saeed Ali and Dillon are on two points each.

The tournament continues today at 14:30hrs with round four and five for the juniors’ competition while the seniors will play round six from 16:45hrs at the Keishar’s Sports Club.