After a rather indifferent show in the opening round, Grandmaster P Harikrishna bounced back in style defeating local star Michele Godena in the second round of the 50th edition of Reggio Emilia International Chess tournament on Monday.

The Indian Grandmaster, who had lost to top seed Zoltan Almasi of Hungary, scored his first point in the event and elevated himself to joint third spot in the category-16 tournament as the other four games of the second round ended as draws.

Harikrishna had some opening problems against Almasi with black pieces, but began confidently in his second match with the king pawn which came as a surprise to Godena.

The Italian GM took a lot of time but could not find a way to wriggle out of problems as Harikrishna emerged with slightly better prospects when the middle game arrived.

Godena found solace in going for a pawn-less endgame but the Indian was quite up to the task in handling the endgame intricacies.

With clinical precision, Harikrishna cut out all possible counterplay by Godena and romped home in 58 moves.

Almasi and Mihail Marin of Romania remained at the helm following easy draws with Viktor Korchnoi of Switzerland [Images] and David Navara of Czech Republic respectively.

The two leaders inched up to 1.5 points out of a possible two and are followed by Harikrishna, Korchnoi, Navara, Konstantin Landa of Russia [Images], Ni Hua of China and Vugar Gashimov of Azerbaijan, who all have one point each.

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