Mitrakanth ground out a 90-move win over Vishweshwaran while TS Ravi defeated J Venkatramana and Sandipan Chanda played beautifully to dissect S Ganeshan today.

Mitrakanth held the advantage for long after playing the Boleslavsky attack against Vishweshwaran's Sicilian Narjdorf defence. In the end game, Mitrakanth had two extra pawns.

On the second board, TS Ravi faced the English Attack against Venkatramana. Ravi squeezed out a slight advantage out of the opening. Venkatramana came under time trouble and allowed his opponent's g pawn to advance to the seventh rank. Ravi won another exchange and that was curtains for Venkatramana, who resigned after 50 moves.

N Sudhakar Babu missed out a chance of joining the leaders when he had two extrapawns against Roktim Bandopadhyay but could not get a break and agreed to split points after 46 moves.

Chanda played the Sozin attack against Ganeshan's Sicilian defence. Chanda countered on the queen-side and did not allow black to castle forcing Ganeshan to keep the King on the centre. After sacrificing a piece, Chanda won a piece and completed victory in 29 moves.

Babu, Bandopadhyay, GB Prakash and Pankaj Joshi are in the second position with 7.5 points.

Creditable has been the performance of Swati Ghate who scored a victory over N Sanjay and is lying in the third position with seven points. She was in a better position when Sanjay's flag fell after the 37th move.

RESULTS (10th round): P Mitrakanth 8 bt K Vishweshwaran 8; J Venkatramana 7 lost to TS Ravi 8; N Sudhakar 7.5 drew with Roktim Bandopadhyay 7.5; Sandipan Chanda 8 bt S Ganeshan 6.5; GB Prakash 7.5 bt Atanu Lahiri 6.5; Sharad Tilak 7 drew with Sriram Jha 7; Pankaj Joshi 7.5 bt Rahul Shetty 6; CS Gokhale 7 bt Ali Amjad 6; SS Soman 7 btSaheli Dhar 6; R Madhusoodan 6 lost to Enamul Hussain 7; N Sanjay 6 lost to Swati Ghate 7; N Neelakanthan 6 lost to Jayant Gokhale 7; Gurupreet Pal Singh 6.5 drew with Deepanjan Das 6.5; Avinash Awate 7 bt Ravindra Dongre 6; SR Kidambi 6.5 bt Dilip Pagey 6.