Another IM, Tejas Bakre of Indian Airlines and reigning champion R Karthik of Tamil Nadu closely followed the leaders with five points each.

RESULTS

6th round: S Kidambi (5.5) drew with Tejas Bakre (5), K. Sasikiran (5.5) bt Vikramjit Singh (4), R. Karthik (5) bt Vikas Sharma (4), P Harikrishana (4.5) drew with Rahul Shandilya (4.5), Rishipal Singh (5) bt VR Kamble (4), Neelotpal Dass (4.5) bt Sameer Singh (3.5), Dileep Tripathi (4.5) bt Satyapragyan (3.5), Beenish Bhatia (4.5) bt Ajay Bir Singh (3.5), Naveen Jain (4) drew with B Handique (4), Shashikant Kutwal (4.5) bt Ashish P Thate (3.5), D. Ravishankar (4.5) bt Ismeet Vohra (3.5), Abhey Karnataki (4) b Biby Sebastian (3).

Nisha Mohota in lead

THALASSERY: IWM Nisha Mohota of West Bengal trounced TamilNadu's fourth seeded R Aarthie to maintain her lead with 7 points after the 8th round of the National Junior Girls's Chess Championship here today.

MR Sangeeta of Tamil Nadu posted a brilliant victory over 5th seed Neha Singh of Bihar to emerge second with 6.5 points, while Manasi Dadarkar of Maharashtra is in the third position with 6 points after she won her game against her compatriot Ashwini Pachapurkar.

RESULTS

8th round: Aarthie Ramaswamy 5 lost to Nisha Mohota 7, Neha Singh 5.5 lost to MR Sangeetha 6.5, Manasi Dadarkar 6 bt Aswini Pacharpurkar 5, Chitra Sridhar 5.5 drew Pazha Sivakami 5.5, Eesha Karvade 5.5 bt Sasinas Haritha 4.5, Shraddha Samani 5.5 bt S Cynthia 4.5, Pallavi Shah 5 bt Pannaga Magal 4.5, M Kasthuri 4 lost to Swati Ghate 5, J E Kavitha 5 bt N Sandhya 4, K Preethi 4 lost to Thelma Gopal 5, M Kavana 4.5 drew S Sujatha 4.5, Y Prathibha 4.5 bt Anuprita Patil 4, Mili Sarkar 4.5 bt Manjula James 3.5, M Priyadarshini 3.5 lost to B Sini 4.5, G Ramyashree 3.5 drew Madonna Fullmoon4.