Bhakti and Vantika maintain lead

Playing with white pieces in a King’s Indian defence game, second seed Bhakti had slight advantage in the middle game, but failed to convert the advantage to decisive effect and agreed to split the point with her tenth seed rival after 59 moves while on the second board, top seed Soumya Swaminathan of PSPB found Maharashtra’s Mrudul Dehankar’s defence as a tough nut to crack and signed the peace treaty after 42 moves by three fold repetition of position arrived out of Tromposwky Attack.

In other important battles in the double round day, six-time champion Vijayalakshmi S tried hard against her teammate Aarathie Ramaswamy but settled for a draw after 73 moves. Third seed Divya Deshmukh of Maharashtra after settling for half points in the previous two rounds came back strongly to defeat Varshiniv V of Tamil Nadu while Srija Seshadri beat Women Grandmaster Kiran Manisha Mohanty of LIC.

Four points in the kitty, 14 players are now sharing the second spot with six rounds still to be played in this 11-round Swiss system championship. Sixth round matches are now in progress at the time of report.

Important results: Round 5: WGM Bhakti Kulkarni of Air India (4.5) drew with WIM Vantika Agrawal of Delhi (4.5); Mrudul Dehankar of Maharashtra (4) drew with WGM Soumya Swaminathan of PSPB (4); WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy of Air India (4) drew with IM Vijayalakshmi S of Air India (4); WIM Varshini V of TN (3) lost to WIM Divya Deshmukh of Maharashtra (4); WGM Kiran Manisha Mohanty of LIC (3) lost to WIM Srija Seshadri of TN (4); Bala Kannamma P of TN (3.5) drew with WIM Priyanka Nutakki of Andhra Pradesh (3.5); WIM Pratyusha Bodda of Andhra Pradesh (4) bt Potluri Saye Srreezza of Telangana (3); Saranya Y of TN (3) lost to WIM Nandhidhaa PV of TN (4); WIM Michelle Catherina of TN (4) bt WFM Meghna CH of Railways (3); Meenal Gupta of J&K (3.5) drew with IM Nisha Mohota of PSPB (3.5); Sunyasakta Satpathy of Odisha (3) lost to WGM Swati Ghate of LIC (4); WCM Isha Sharma of Karnatkaa (4) bt Nandhini Saripalli of Goa (3);WGM Meenakshi Subbaraman of Air India (4) bt Srishti Pandey of Maharashtra (3); WFM Nityata Jain of Madhya Pradesh (4) bt Rindhya V of TN (3).