Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly maintained a full point lead over his nearest rivals with a clinical victory over PSPB team mate GM R B Ramesh in the 12th round of the 41st National 'A' chess championship in Kozikhode on Friday.
Ganguly took his tally to 9 points out of a possible 12 and is now followed by GM Koneru Humpy of Andhra Pradesh and the PSPB trio of British champion GM Abhijit Kunte, GM Sandipan Chanda and IM Neelotpal Das, who all have eight points apiece.
Just behind them on 7.5 points is Bengal lad Saptarshi Roy Chowhdury, while a pack of four players Commonwealth champion GM Dibyendu Barua of West Bengal, top seed GM P Harikrishna of PSPB, IM Tejas Bakre of Indian Airlines and Ramesh -- have 7 points each to their credit.
Ganguly was in his element while beating Ramesh from the white side of a Sicilain Sveshnikov game. Ramesh had included the opening in his repertoire following great success with it by the likes of Russian GM Vladimir Kramnik and Hungarian GM Peter Leko but on this day his preparation did not hold him in good stead.
Ganguly followed a move preferred by Anand against Kramnik in their last encounter in the recently-concluded World Rapid Championship in France and managed a slight advantage as Ramesh confined himself to the defence of his queen side weaknesses.
The Kolkata-based player had Ramesh in his clutches with a thematic rook manoeuvre and it was soon curtains with Ramesh losing a handful of pawns. The game lasted 44 moves.
After gathering just a half point in the last three games, Humpy bounced back into the reckoning with a fine victory over GM Pravin Thipsay of Bank Sports Board. Playing white, Humpy allowed Pravin to draw parity in a Kings Indian defence game but capitalised on a tactical oversight by the former National champion to register a smooth victory.
Abhijit Kunte outclassed S Satyapragyan of Indian Airlines while Sandipan Chanda had a smooth cruise over M Srinivas Rao of Andhra Pradesh.
Results (round 12): P Harikrishna (7) beat Suvrajit Saha (5.5); V Hariharan (2.5) drew Argyadip Das (4); Koneru Humpy (8) beat Praveen Thipsay (6.5); Sriram Jha (5) drew Tejas Bakre (7); Prathamesh Mokal (6) lost to Neelotpal Das (8); Roktim Bandhopadhyay (5) drew Saptarshi Chowdhury (7.5); Abhijit Kunte (8) beat S Satyapragyan (5.5); Dibyendu Barua (7) beat T S Ravi (4); Sandipan Chanda (8) beat M Srinivas Rao (1.5); Vikramjit Singh (4.5) lost to M R Venkatesh (6.5); S Kidambi (6.5) beat Vishal Sareen (4.5); S S Ganguly (9) beat R B Ramesh (7).