Jamshedpur: Fifth seed Aayush Agarwal continued to maintain his lead on the penultimate day of the 38th Open District Chess Championship underway at the JRD Tata Sports Complex in Bistupur here on Thursday.

Aayush (1526) tripped Chandan Kumar Prasad (1395) in the seventh round to emerge the sole leader with 6.5 points.

Seven contestants, including top seed Anshul Nigam (men) and Pracheta , are placed second with six points each.

The completion of seventh round saw Anshul, Pracheta, Ajit Masih, Jagannath Prasad Sharma, Sanchit Mukherjee, Anurag Panigrahi and Bholanath Das winning the respective matches with two more rounds to go.

A clutch of four players - Abhradeep Banerjee (1167), Chandan Kumar Prasad, Vishal Kumar Minz (1083) and unseeded Ajit Kumar-are placed third with 5.5 points each.

The event which started on May 13 comes to a close on Friday after nine rounds of play.