Grandmaster MR lalith Babu from Andhra Pradesh came through with flying colours to lead the pack with seven points at the end of the tenth round of the Khadi India National Premier Chess Championship in Patna on Tuesday.
With Arvaindh Chithambaram and the three other players, who shared the second spot, quickly drew their respective games, lalith Babu realised that his win against lowly rated Sammed Shete of Maharashtra would put him in an enviable position. He prevailed over Shete with comparative ease. Aravindh is the lone player with 6.5 points on the second position. Three more rounds are still there.
lalith Babu deployed Caro Kann defence and faced no hiccups until move 37, by which time the queens and many pieces were exchanged. Though lalith had four pawns, they were individual islands compared to three connected pawns of Sammed in the centre. A weak 42nd move by Sammed resulted in the loss of a knight and a bishop against a rook. The rest was routine. The debutant Sammed has faced five losses in a row.
RR laxman of Railways handled the Slav defence adopted by his team mate Himanshu Sharma comfortably. After exchanging the queen on 29th move, Himanshu lost a pawn after nine more moves. When Himanshu had the choice of either losing his bishop or resignation, he preferred the latter.
Railways international master S Nitin chose the Fischer Sozin attack of the Najdorf variation in Sicilian defence against the joint leader Aravindh. Najdorf variation has been the favourite one played in this tournament.
It was also preferred by Boris Gelfand in the World championship Final against Vishwanathan Anand in 2012.
After opening up the king side in the early part of the game, Aravindh castled on the queen side. The rooks and pawns ended in a tame draw.
Immediately after Aravindh finished the game, his team mate Karthikeyan followed him out of the hall with an agreed draw with Odisha's Grandmaster Debashis Das. Though Karthikeyan had a rook in lieu of Debashis' knight in the end game, the latter forced a draw by repeated checks with his queen to the exposed king of Karthikeyan.