Mumbai, July 16: Eleven players shared the lead with three points each at the end of the Group B third-round matches of the Entrant's Division chess tournament, organised by the Bombay Chess Association at the Zandu Pharmaceutical Works canteen, Sayani Road, yesterday.

Among the 11 are Junior collegian Prasanna Iyer, Vishal Shah, a fifth standard student of St Joseph's (Malad) and Wesley Falcao from a Vasai school. Prasanna was lucky to gain a full point from school kid Ashutosh Thipsay. Vishal and Wesley outwitted their senior opponents Dhiraj Wagh and Yatin Kumamekar, respectively.

The others to win three games in a row were: Sujit Unnikrishnan of Shah & Anchor Engg. College, Jeevan Wagh, Dhiraj Gohil, Manoj Tawade, Kailash Shelar, Milind Phadnis and Junior collegians Amol Chakradev and Jikku Abraham.

On the top board, second seed Prasanna handled the black side of the closed Sicilian defence game against Ashutosh. Prasanna blundered his bishop on the 23rd move. Then helost his rook for white knight. Instead of exchanging queens, Ashutosh saved his queen only to give the dangerous black queen a chance to give two fatal checks from h-2 and h-1 squares to get white king checkmated in 33 moves. Ashutosh could have won a simple end game with a full rook up, had he captured black queen on h-3 square with his g-2 pawn on his 32nd turn.

In the Queen's Gambit game, school kid Vishal Shah with white pieces captured Dhiraj Wagh's one pawn on the 21st move and the second one on the 24th move. He immediately simplified the position by exchanging queens, last pair of rooks and one minor piece and created three connected passers in a, b and c files. Also two pawns down, Wagh resigned on the 35th move.

In a Guico Piano game Ketki Kulkarni of Patkar Vidyalaya handled the white side against Sujit who moved his knight to D-4 square on the third move offering his e-5 pawn. Ketki wisely didn't fall in Sujit's trap but placed her rook on the wrong square on the 13th turn and lost it forblack bishop. She allowed Sujit to break her castle by losing one pawn. When black queen and rook came close to white king, Ketki resigned on the 38th move.

In Group A, Milind Ketkar, Yashodhan Gogte, Mugdha Variyar, all three school students, Anil Arora, Arun Subramaniam, Harshvardhan Ambardekar, Ninant Pednekar and Sachin Sale lead with an all-win record at the end of the third round. After six rounds, the top 17 players from each group will play six play-off matches.