Ram, Priyanka move closer to title

Top seeds Ram Aravind and Priyanka Nutakki maintained their sole lead in the open and girls section respectively and moved closer towards the titles with one round to go at the ongoing National Under-11 Chess Championship, here today.
In the penultimate round, playing white side of closed variation of Ruy Lopez game, Tamil Nadu's Ram missed the opportunity to extend his lead to full point as he miscalculated the end position to settle for a draw against team mate Praggnandhaa R in 59 moves.
Rahul Srivatshav of Andhra Pradesh was closely following the leader with a drift of half point as he defeated Bhavik Bharambe of Maharashtra in the tenth round encounter at the Ludlow Castle Sports Complex.

Barath M of Goa defeated Odisha's Rudrakash Parida to occupy third spot along with Bhavik with eight points.
Meanwhile in the girl's section, top seed Andhra Pradesh's Priyanka defeated Anwesha Mishra of Odisha to take her point tally to nine from possible ten to maintain full point lead over second placed Vantika Agrawal of Delhi, who beat Goa's Riddhi Zantye in the penultimate round.
Krystal Fernandes of Goa along with Tamilnadu duo Lakshmi and Tejasvi are at third spot with seven and half a points.
Krystal beat Palkin Kaur of Delhi while Tejasvi and Lakshmi outwitted Salonika Saina of Odisha and Bommini Mounika Akshaya from Andhra Pradesh respectively in the tenth round.

In the final round tomorrow, Ram is paired against Barath while Rahul takes on second seed Saurabh Anand of Bihar and in girl's Priyanka and Vantika will fight it out against Lakshmi and Krystal respectively.