Tania draws with Harika, leads in Nationals

Chennai, Dec 15 (UNI) Woman Grand Master Tania Sachdev of New Delhi held on to her slender half-point lead with a defending draw against WGM Harika from Andhra pradesh in the tenth round of the National Women A Chess Championship here today.

As the championship moves to the last round tomorrow, Tania leads with 7.5 points, followed by three others, S Vijayalakshmi, R Aarthie (both Indian Aiilines) and Dronavalli Harika of Andhra Pradesh. A last round win would secure Tania her maiden title.

However she has a tough battle on cards, facing former National Champion Aarthie with the Black pieces.

From a Benoni opening, Harika as Black obtained lasting initiative, but Tania defended well to transpose the game into a drawn Queen and pawn ending, which saw both players promoting their pawns to second Queen. After the exchange of one pair of queen, the game was drawn in 54 moves.

The game between resurgent WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy and Amruta Mokkal was a tensed one, with both the players going for the opponents King at the risk of weakening their own King position. In the ensuing tactics, Aarthie outplayed her opponent to score 5.5 points from her last six games to move to joint second position.

Top seed WGM Vijayalakshmi of Indian Airlines slowly ground down Swathi Ghate from black side of Ruy Lopez Breyer variation. Swathi who was at one time leading the tournament, lost consequently to fall on the edge of the qualifying spots. The top six finishers qualify to the India team and would represent India in International events abroad.

Swathi wasted too many moves on the Queenside to allow Viji to penetrate via the a-file and with the white Bishop dangerously close to the white King, Swathi lost an exchange and when threatened with further loss of material resigned on the 48th move.

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