World junior champion Pendyala Harikrishna almost made sure of the title with an easy draw with top seeded Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov of the Netherlands in the fifth and penultimate round of the Crown group of Essent International Chess tournament in Hoogeveen on Friday.
The draw helped Harikrishna retain his full point lead over Sokolov and Emil Sutovsky of Israel and the Indian now just needs a draw with white pieces against women's World champion Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria in the final round.
In the other game of the four-players double round robin event, Stefanova held Sutovsky to a draw.
As things stand, Harikrishna is on 3.5 points with Sokolov and Sutovsky tied on 2.5.
Stefanova has 1.5 points in her kitty and assuming she takes the draw Harikrishna needs, it would be a creditable performance from her as she would gain some ELO rating points in this strong field.
Sokolov tried hard but faced an important theoretical novelty by Harikrishna in the Slav Defense game that was hard to handle.
Playing black, Harikrishna uncorked his new idea on the 14th turn and thereafter a series of exchanges led to a pawn plus endgame for Sokolov but there was ample counter play for the Hyderabad-based.
Later, Sokolov went for further exchanges and effectively transposed to a rook and pawns endgame, which was a forced draw. The game lasted 36 moves.