The Indian brother-sister duo of R Praggnanandhaaa and R Vaishali suffered defeats in their respective sections while Magnus Carlsen justified his top billing with a win over Ding Liren to surge to sole lead on 12 points in the Norway Chess tournament here.

Fabiano Caruana also scored over compatriot Hikaru Nakamura to help Carlsen emerge as the front-runner for the crown in the six-player double round-robin contest being fought for a total prize pool of $161,000.

Pragganandhaa lost to Firouzja Alireza of France in the Armageddon tie-breaker after suffering a bit through the Classical game. Vaishali went down to world women’s champion Wenjun Ju of China, who outplayed the Indian in the endgame.

With four rounds still to come in both sections, Carlsen is now followed by Nakamura on 11 points while Praggnanandhaa is still third on 9.5 points.

Alireza is fourth with eight points and Caruana follows him with 6.5 points. Surprisingly, China’s Ding Liren seems completely out of sorts with just 2.5 points thus far, needing a miracle to come back in the tournament.

In the women’s section, Wenjun snatched the lead from Vaishali along with Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine who won a hard-fought Armageddon against Tingjie Lei of China. Both Wenjun and Muzychuk have an identical 10.5 points, half point ahead of Vaishali.

Lei is fourth on seven points, enjoying a two-point lead over Koneru Humpy who suffered another loss at the hands of Pia Cramling of Sweden in the Armageddon. Cramling has 4.5 points now and is still at the bottom of the tables.

Praggnanandhaa suffered a jolt in his quest as Alireza played a nice game under Classical to put pressure and eventually drew the contest. In the return game however, the Indian faltered and could not really stage a comeback.