Tania shocks Swati to share top spot

Eighth seed Tania Sachdev pulled off a major surprise in the girls' section when she defeated Indian compatriot and fourth seed Swati Ghate to share the lead with two others after the second round of the Asian junior (under 20) chess tournament in Bombay on Thursday.

Tania, second seed Koneru Humpy, who got the better of fifth seeded Indian compatriot and national women's runner-up S Meenakshi, and ninth seed Elena Levushkina of Uzebekistan, who had shocked top seed Aarthie Ramaswamy in the first round on Wednesday, led the girls' field with 2 points each.

In the boys' section, top seed P Harikrishna of India got the better of Du Shan of China to score his second successive win and share the top spot with four others which included his compatriots S Satyapragyan and Valay Parikh. All of them had 2 points from as many rounds.

Second seed Surya Sekhar Ganguly of India drew with compatriot Tejas Bakre to lie in the joint second spot with 1.5 points to his credit.

In another boys' clash C J Arvind, seeded a lowly 14th, surprisingly held fifth-seeded Indian compatriot Neelotpal Das to a draw in 33 moves.

International Woman Master (IWM) and the player with the best elo rating in the girls section, Aarthie, put behind her surprise loss to Elena to score over Madina Duisenova of Kazakhstan and earn her first point in two days.

In other interesting girls' matches, India's IWM Nisha Mohta drew with China's Yu Ting while Y Pratibha defeated Feroza Haque Chowdhary of Bangladesh to coast to her first win.