World champion D Gukesh overcame a loss against Leinier Dominguez Perez to beat the American duo of Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana to stand at fourth spot.
Aronian sits on six points, followed closely by compatriot Fabiano Caruana on five after two wins and a draw. Gukesh shares the third place with another American, Wesley So, while Vachier-Lagrave and Leinier Dominguez Perez are tied for fifth with three points each.
Like Gukesh, Aronian was just able to draw two games and lost one.
Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa took down World No 1 Magnus Carlsen to advance to the top-bracket quarter-finals along with Arjun Erigaisi at the Freestyle Grand Slam Tour.
Arjun prevailed over Abdusattorov 1.5-0.5 while Praggnanandhaa lost an intense battle 3-4 against Caruana.
World champion Dommaraju Gukesh scored one win and four draws on the opening day to slip to joint-sixth in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz chess tournament, a part of the Grand chess tour, in St. Louis (USA), on Friday.
Arjun Erigaisi breathed a sigh of relief after receiving his US visa to compete in the upcoming World Rapid and Blitz Championships in New York
Playing white, Ganges Grandmasters defeated Balan Alaskan Knights 11-6 in a battle between the two leaders on the scoreboard.
The game incidentally was an old Sicilian where Shirov tried an unconventional ninth move.
Five-time World champion Viswanathan Anand will lead India's charge at the online Nations Cup beginning on Tuesday, where some of the world's best players will face off amid the coronavirus pandemic which has thrown the sporting calendars out of gear. The six-team event, touted to the richest online team tournament, features all the big names in the game with World champion Magnus Carlsen being the only big gun missing from the line-up.
Nihal Sarin closes in on final Grandmaster norm
Grandmaster and former national champion B Adhiban beat Brazilian Grandmaster Alexander Fier in the second round and advance to the third round of the chess World Cup in Tromso, Norway, on Thursday
Grandmaster and former national champion B Adhiban was knocked out of the chess World Cup after losing his second game on the trot against higher-ranked Hikaru Nakamura of United States in the third round in Tromso, Norway.
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