At the top board, Pratibha, facing the Scheveningen setup of the Sicilian defence, played it safe with a Be2. But having gained central control, she needlessly pushed forward with g4. Subhashini saw a clever defence and won in 65 moves.

At the second board, top seed Humpy adopted the Caro Kann defence against second seed Tania Sachdev. She saddled Tania with an isolated d4 pawn, took advantage of the passive development of the queen bishop, and captured the strong bishop at d3. Tania, faced with heavy loss of material, resigned on the 33rd move.

In the boys section, Valay used thesafe Slav variation of Queens gambit. Harikrishna gained the edge by taking control of the open C file with his queen and rook. Valay plugged the critical squares in this file, but Hari soon created openings in the queens wing. Valay was forced to give up a piece to prevent queening and he lost eventually.

Results (sixth round)

Y Pratibha (TN) 4.5 lost to TS Subhashini (TN 5; Tania Sachdev (Delhi) 4 lost to K. Humpy (AP) 5; Chitra Sridhar (Kar) 5 bt Priyadarshini (TN) 4; Rucha Karavade (Mah) 3.5 lost to JE Kavitha (TN) 4.5; James Manjula (Ker) 4.5 bt M Kasturi (TN) 3.5; G Soumya (Mah) 4.5 bt Vinita (AP) 3.5