Humpy continues to share lead

Woman Grandmaster Koneru Humpy continued to share the lead with top seed woman FIDE Master Xu Yuanyuan of China after the two played a draw with each other in the 10th round of the World Junior chess championship in Athens.

Both Humpy and Yuanyuan have 7.5 points and are followed by a pack of five players on 7 points, including Paehtz Elisabeth (Germany), Mkrtchian Lilit (Armenia), Zimina Olga (Russia), Zhao Xue (China) and Nana Dzagnidze (Georgia).

S Meenakshi went down fighting to Nana Dzagnidze with black pieces. Double woman Grandmaster norm holder Aarthie Ramaswamy's final norm prospects almost diminished as she lost to woman FIDE Master Kosintseva Nadezhda of Russia while Asian junior champion M Kasturi drew with Ramanauskaite Giedre of Lithuania.

In the boys' section, India's P Magesh Chandran failed to keep up the momentum and went down to Sergei Azarov of Belarus after an intense battle.

International Master Sargissian Gabriel of Armenia emerged as the sole leader on eight points with a resounding victory over IM Emanuel Berg of Sweden. Half a point adrift of Gabriel is top seed Chinese FIDE Master Ni Hua and Georgian IM Gagunashvili Merab.

IM Tejas Bakre (6.5) surged ahead with a fine victory over Papp Gabor (5.5) of Hungary and M R Venkatesh (5.5) improved his prospects by out-manoeuvring IM Sedlak Nikola (4.5) of Yugoslavia. K Rathnakaran lost his game against Georgiou Konstantinos of Greece.

Humpy opened with the Queen pawn and the game transposed into a less-played variation wherein Yuanayuan got a dynamic balance with the black pieces.

Early in the middlegame, Humpy dismantled the pawn structure of Yuanyuan after surrendering her Bishop to a knight but her king side attack did not yield desirable advantage. After a series of forced manoeuvres, Humpy allowed her opponent to get a draw vide perpetual checks in 27 moves.

Meenakshi, black, went for a premature attack on the king side and had to pay the price for her over-ambitiousness. The opening featured the theoretical manoeuvres of the Fianchetto variation of the Slav defence and Nana got her pieces rolling on king side after Meenakshi created a few weaknesses there.

The Indian wriggled out of her difficulties only to find that the endgame did not offer much resistance. The game lasted 48 moves.

Aarthie required two successive victories to make the final Woman Grandmaster norm. However, she perished to a good technical display by Nadezhda from an irregular opening game with white pieces. Nadezhda conducted her pieces well to win in 64 moves.

Bakre was in top form, outwitting Papp Gabor in his favourite Sicilian Classical with black pieces. In the Velimirovic attack, Gabor could not make much of Bakre's centralised king and lost after 60 moves in a heavy pieces endgame.

Venkatesh did not face many difficulties in toppling Nikola from the white side of a Reti opening game in 46 moves.