Sasikiran, Harikrishna share lead

Grandmasters Pendyala Harikrishna and Krishnan Sasikiran share the lead with 12 points each at the end of the 16th round in the 39th National 'A' chess championship, in Nagpur, on Friday.

Harikrishna comfortably got the better of C S Gokhale, while Sasikiran, the overnight sole leader, was held by International Master S S Ganguly.

Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua, who scored an easy victory over B T Muralikrishnan, raised his tally to 11.5 points.

Ganguly is on 10.5 points while GM Abhijit Kunte and IM V Sarvanan are on 9.5 points. All are in contention for top honours.

Harikrishna opened with his queen pawn and Gokhale replied with Nimzo Indian defence. Gokhale ignored playing e5 and paid the penalty when Harikrishna pushed his own pawn to e5 and followed it up with pawn sacrifice on f5.

Gokhale had not created any weaknesses in his king side but Harikrishna still found a way to destroy Gokhale's king side with a brilliant attack in which Harikrishna's queen, rook and knight took part. Gokhale's defence collapsed on the 23rd move. With mate staring him in the face, Gokhale resigned.

In their Sicilian Defence game IM S S Ganguly (white) and GM K Sasikiran played a highly tactical game from 18th move onwards. Ganguly's passed pawn in 'c' and 'd' file looked menacing but when Sasikiran forced exchange of queen and captured Ganguly's advanced pawn, a drawish position was reached. The players split the point on the 38th move.