Seventh seeded woman Grandmaster Zhao Xue of China regained sole lead with a fine technical victory over Tatiana Kosintseva of Russia in the seventh round of the 19th World junior girls chess championship in Panaji, Goa.
Xue took her tally to six points, and is a half point ahead of Natalia Pogonina of Russia, who holds the sole second position.
Top seed Koneru Humpy slipped to joint third position after facing rough weather in her seventh round match which she drew with Elmira Hasanova of Russia.
After two successive victories over woman Grandmaster opponents, P Priya played it safe with black pieces against S Zigangirova of Kazakhstan and took her points tally to 4.5.
Also moving to 4.5 points was Asian junior girls' champion Tania Sachdev, who put it across Helm Leonie of Germany.
Humpy had to put up stiff resistance after she lost a pawn in the middle game against Hasanova. Earlier the players fought a Kings Indian defence with white pieces, where Humpy, white, employed the Fianchetto variation.
Playing for a win, Humpy overlooked a piece manoeuvre and lost a pawn but got some counter play in the shape of an attack in the centre.
Hasanova fumbled and returned the favour to arrive in a Queen and rook endgame where the draw was agreed to.
Playing white, Xue opened with her pet queen pawn and it took a lot of effort on her part to get a tangible advantage with some imaginative manoeurves on the queen side. However, once she broke through successfully, there was no looking back as her queen penetrated decisively.
In the boys' event, Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna played out a fighting draw even as the top board clash between the leaders ended in a quick tie in the seventh round.
With six more rounds remaining, the two overnight leaders -- Ni Hua of China and Levon Aronian of Armenia -- maintained their joint lead with a quick draw within a few minutes of the start of the game.
The second board game between GM Vladimir Potkin of Russia and top seed GM Bu Xiangzhi of China also had a similar result, but on the third board, Harikrishna fought till the last nail to remain in the joint third position.
Playing black, Harikrishna was back to his once-favourite French defence and faced the Advance variation by Luke McShane. The middle game was fought fiercely as McShane tried to make amends for his dismal performance in the previous round when he lost to Aronian.
Playing defensively, Hari matched McShane move for move in the wild complexities and eventually steered the game to an endgame after giving up a pawn.
The position remained level for a long time but McShane agreed to the peace deal after trying for more than four
hours.
GM Ghaem Maghami of Iran missed out on his chances and went down fighting to Dimitri Jakovenko of Russia, who played with the white pieces.
Maghami opened with the Sicilian defence and was surprised by deep opening preparation by Jakovenko. Taking a lot of time, the Iranian fell back on clock and was pushed to the wall in the middle game.
The counter play bid however came in strongly as Jakovenko went for a dubious piece sacrifice to initiate a king side attack but as the dust subsided, found himself in a rook versus two minor pieces endgame. However, Maghami failed to deliver in the final moments of the game and lost after blundering.
International Master S Satyapragyan continued his excellent performance and held World under-18 champion GM Ferenc Berkes to a creditable draw with the white pieces while Grandmaster-to-be Surya Shekhar Ganguly could not do much against the solid play by IM Amon Simutowe of Zambia and had to take the draw in the endgame.
