Woman Grandmaster Bhakti Kulkarni of India defeated Nguyen Thi Mai Hung of Vietnam to emerge as the sole leader in the Asian continental women's chess championship here.
Bhakti's brilliant run continued with her fourth victory out of five games and the Indian took her tally to an impressive 4.5 points out of a possible five, a half point ahead of nearest contender Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova of Uzbekistan.
The higher-ranked Indians in the fray continued to have a tough time as Padmini Rout survived some anxious moments before splitting the point with Pham Le Thao Nguyen of Vietnam and Soumya Swaminathan could also manage just a draw against lower seed Li Xueyi of China. Mary Ann Gomes went down to compatriot B Pratyusha.
Bhakti Kulkarni has been a revelation here and it was another knockout performance that sealed the full point against Mai Hung. The Semi Slav defense by the Vietnamese was met with deft preparation and once Bhakti got her king side pawn rolling there was not stopping. The attack ripped apart black's king side and the game lasted 39 moves.
In the open championship being organised simultaneously, former national champion S P Sethuraman took a stride forward defeating compatriot Deep Sengupta in a keenly-contested game to emerge as one of the nine co-leaders along with Surya Shekhar Ganguly.
With the draw being the order of the day on top boards, Sethuraman, Gao Rui of China and Petr Kostenko of Kazakhstan joined the six overnight leaders.
With nine players sharing the lead on four points after five rounds, as many as 12 are in close pursuit just a half point behind. The Indians sharing the tenth spot are B Adhiban and Vidi Santosh Gujrathi and these two are expected to come out firing on all cylinders in the remaining four rounds.
Sethuraman played a fine game to outwit Sengupta out of another Semi Slav of the day wherein the former played white. Winning an exchange in the middle game, Sethuraman just had to ensure his technique remained right in converting and he won 42 moves.
With five places up for grabs in the next world chess cup from here, the championship is likely to heat up in the next round. There is a combined prize pool of USD 75000 at stake in both categories.
