Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly played out a fighting draw against Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury of West Bengal to maintain his top position after the 18th round of the 41st National 'A' chess championship in Kozikhode on Tuesday.

With five more rounds to go in the 23-round championship, Ganguly is sitting pretty on 14 points, followed by GM Koneru Humpy (AP), GM Sandipan Chanda (PSPB) and top seed Pendyala Harikrishna (AP), all of whom are on 12.5 points apiece.

GM Abhijit Kunte is in sole fifth spot on 12 points while his PSPB colleague IM Neelotpal Das has 11 under his belt.

In another board, Harikrishna outclassed International Master Sriram Jha of LIC with an emphatic endgame display, at the Chess India Complex.

The Andhra player emerged winner after successfully tackling the challenge posed by Jha in the Semi Slav defence game where the latter played black.

Going straight for the endgame, where he only had a miniscule advantage, Harikrishna consolidated his position in copybook fashion and even the intermittent exchange of pawns could not stop him from gaining the maximum. Jha resigned on the 41st move.

Sandipan Chanda was also seen in his element against GM Pravin Thipsay of Bank Sports Board as he steadily developed his middle game advantage.

The two played a closed Ruy Lopez where Thipsay, black, failed to equalise comfortably and lost his weak central pawn.

Humpy drew her game against young IM Prathamesh Mokal of BSB. Playing white, Mokal earned a slightly better position before Humpy went for a routine trading of pieces that steered the game to a drawn result.

Results round 17: P Harikrishna (12.5) beat Sriram Jha (7); Prathamesh Mokal (9) drew Koneru Humpy (12.5); Roktim Bandhopadhyay (8) drew V Hariharan (4); Abhijit Kunte (12) drew Suvrajit Saha (8); Dibyendu Barua (10.5) beat Arghyadip Das (6.5); Sandipan Chanda (12.5) beat Praveen Thipsay (9); S Vikramjit Singh (8) lost to Tejas Bakre (10); S Kidambi (10) drew Neelotpal Das (11); S S Ganguly (14) drew Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (9.5); R B Ramesh (10.5) beat S Satyapragyan (7.5); Vishal Sareen (6.5) lost to T S Ravi (6); M R Venkatesh (9.5) beat M Srinivasa Rao (2).