Four share lead at Nagpur

NAGPUR, AUG 16: Shanker Roy (Eastern Railway), PDS Girinath (South Central Railway), SS Ganguly (Goodricke), N Sudhakar Babu (Indian Bank) ...

NAGPUR, AUG 16: Shanker Roy (Eastern Railway), PDS Girinath (South Central Railway), SS Ganguly (Goodricke), N Sudhakar Babu (Indian Bank) and SS Soman (Central Excise) emerged as the joint-leaders at the end of the sixth round of the 4th BPCL FIDE Rating chess now in progress here at University Gymnasium Hall.

Fourth seed Shanker Roy and third seed PDS Girinath played a draw on the first table to take their tally to five and half points each.

On the second table, 14th seed SS Ganguly proved too hot to handle for the top seed TS Ravi (4.5). Ravi lost a pawn in early game. Thereafter, exchanging the queen, Ravi searched for equality in vain. He was determined to rely on an extra pawn to win one back. However, the move did not pay and he lost a piece for a pawn and surrendered.

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The third table witnessed a dull draw between teammates Sarvanan and Jayant Gokhale. On the fourth table, Sudhakar Babu neatly outwitted former sub-junior champion Prasenjit Dutta in 37 moves.

State champ SS Soman defeated N Jyothilal (4.5) in an exchange-variation game.

OTHER RESULTS (6th round): IM V Sarvanan (5) drew IM Jayant Gokhale (5), Gajendra Singh (4) lost to Survajit Saha (5), SS Dave (4) lost to Neelotpal Das (5), R Balsubramanium (5) beat VN Solanki (4), Anup Deshmukh (4) drew RS Gupta (4)