Grandmaster Nihal Sarin halted Parham Maghsoodloo’s unbeaten run with a brilliant victory to join the leaders after the seventh round of the FIDE Grand Swiss here, while R Vaishali also regained sole lead in the women’s section.

World champion D Gukesh’s slumped to a third straight defeat here on Thursday, this time against Turkey’s Ediz Gurel, slipping out of contention and down to 10th in the live world rankings with four rounds still to play. Vaishali, a winner in the previous edition, outclassed her Chinese counterpart in the seventh round and now sits half a point behind Russian Kateryna Lagno.