Top seeded Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran of Tamil Nadu drew his 18th round match against fifth seed GM Dibyendu Barua of Bengal to increase his points tally to 14.5 in the 40th men's National 'A' chess championship in Mumbai on Wednesday.
In the 28th women's National 'A' championship, top seed and WGM S Vijayalakshmi of Tamil Nadu defeated overnight leader and unseeded Nisha Mohota of Bengal in the 10th round.
Vijayalakshmi, Nisha and third seed R Aarthie, who got a bye, are tied in the top spot with 7.5 points each.
In other important matches involving Grandmasters, second seed Pendyala Harikrishna of Andhra Pradesh drew with fourth seed S S Ganguly of Bengal to move into the second spot with 12.5 points while third seed Abhijit Kunte of Maharashtra drew with sixth seed IM R B Ramesh of Tamil Nadu.
Kunte, with eleven points to his credit, is in the third spot while S S Ganguly and Ramesh have ten and 7.5 points respectively.
Results (Men's 16th round): S S Soman (5.5) drew with Sriram Jha (6.5); S Kidambi (9) drew with Suvrajit Saha (6.5); Pravin Thipsay (9) beat G B Prakash (8); K Sasikiran (14.5) drew with D Barua (11); Tejas Bakre (9) beat Lanka Ravi (8); P Harikrishna (12.5) drew with S S Ganguly (9.5); M R Venkatesh (10) beat P Mokal (5); Neelotpal Das (10) beat Arvind Shastry (6.5); V Saravanan (4.5) drew ith R Saptarshi (9); Abhijit Kunte (11) drew with R B Ramesh (7.5).
Women's 10th round: J E Kavita (2) lost to Sai Meera (2.5); S Meenakshi (5.5) lost to D Harika (7); S Vijayalashmi (7.5) beat Nisha Mohota (7.5); Swati Ghate (6) beat Swati Mohota (2); Tania Sachdev (6) drew with Krutika Nadig (2.5); Eesha Karavade (5.5) drew with Y Pratibha (4.5).
