Barua joins Harikrishna to share lead

Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna, who was held to a draw by International Master N Sudhakar Babu and GM D Barua who easily beat IM N K Mishra have both scored 8.5 at the end of eleventh round of Bharat Petroleum 39th National 'A' chess championship in Nagpur on Sunday.

GM K Sasikaran, who had no difficulty beating IM Sriram Jha and IM S S Ganguly who confortably beat B T Murlikrishnan, follow the leaders with 8 points to their credit.

Harikrishna employed the slav setup in reply to queen pawn opening of Babu. On the 16th move Babu offered a draw which Harikrishna refused. With a steady exchange of pieces Babu managed to steer the game to a drawish ending and the two agreed to draw the game after 53 moves.

Two other games were drawn.

Barua opened with king pawn and Mishra played the sicilian defence. Barua got the upper hand from the opening. In the middle Mishra forced no problem and Barua won on the 39th move.

Sisikiran playing white against Jha played slav structure game. Sasikiran avoided exchange of queens on the 24th move, sacrificed the pawn on the 33rd and exposed Jha's king. He used the combined power of his queen and bishop power and rounded off the game with a queen sacrifice on the 48th move. He forced Jha's resignation on the 52nd move.