National u-11 Age Group Chess Round 9: Ram Aravind, Priyanka Nutakki Keep lead

Ram Aravind’s winning run came to a halt when local boy Aansh Gupta forced the top seed to split a point in the ninth round of the National Under-11 Open Chess Championship at Ludlow Castle Sports Complex, here on Sunday.

Playing with white pieces in closed Sicilian Defence game, Aansh showed great attacking skills in the middle game to gain slender advantage but Ram stood firm with accurate defensive moves to deny decisive result to his Delhi rival and agreed to sign the peace treaty after 64 moves.

Ram still maintains his sole lead with eight and half points while Bhavik Bharambe of Maharashtra occupies the lone second spot with eight points after outwitting his higher seeded Tamil Nadu rival Sahdu S Adithya in the ninth round encounter.

Rahul Srivatshav of Andhra Pradesh defeated Koustav Chatterjee of West Bengal to be at third spot with seven and half points.

In the girls’ section, top seed Priyanka Nutakki of Andhra Pradesh beat Divya Deshmukh of Maharashtra in 69 moves to extend her lead to full point while Delhi girl Vantika Agrawal and Salonika Saina of Odisha are at second spot with seven points.

Vantika defeated Samriddhaa Ghosh of West Bengal and Salonika got better of Lakshmi C of Tamil Nadu.