Atanu Lahiri attains sole leadership

But draws seemed to be the order of the day with some games not lasting even 20 moves.

Ponnuswamy Konguvel drew with Sacchidanand Soman in 19 moves on top board. K Murugan and Gurpreet Pal Singh drew after 46 moves in the third board while Dinesh Sharma and Verghese Koshy agreed to a 10-move draw.

Lahiri, whose career has looked up after his triumph here, played the Knights Tango which transposed into the Nimzo Indian, Tiamonovvariation. Lahiri’s dynamism was met with a solid position by Shetty. But Lahiri got the breakthrough due to some minor errors by Shetty. Then Lahiri’s combined piece play saw him converting it into a huge one and the neat ending spelt death for Shetty’s challenge in 37 moves.

Chanda, also a winner of the All-India Rating here a year ago, had one extra piece — a rook and bishop to Venkatraman’s rook. Chanda won after 76 moves.

P Harikrishna is also on 3.5 points. He was a rare winner today in the top boards, beating Suvrajit Saha in 77 moves. The youngster was in some strife after the Kings Indian opening. He was a pawn down. Later, he not only won back the pawn but overturned the situation on Saha when the latter blundered a pawn. In the endgame, he had a bishop and two pawns to Saha’s knight and pawn.

Top seeded RB Ramesh (3) slipped to the third position when he drew with young Saurabh Kherdekar (3) in 37 moves of Sicilian Defence.

RESULTS (FOURTH ROUND)

P Konguvel 3.5 drew SS Soman 3.5;Atanu Lahiri 4 bt Rahul Shetty 3; K Verghese Koshy 3.5; Surya Shekar Ganguly 3.5 drew S Satyapragyan 3.5; TS Ravi 3.5 drew Roktim Bandopadhyay 3.5; Jayant Gokhale 3.5 drew C Natarajan 3.5; RB Ramesh 3 drew S Kherdekar 3; TS Venkatraman 2.5 lost to Sandipan Chanda 3.5; P Mitrakanth 3 drew Avinash Awate 3; Pankaj Joshi 3.5 bt Shankar Roy 2.5; P Harikrishna 3.5 bt Suvrajit Saha 2.5; Anup Deshmukh 3 drew P Mahesh Chandran 3; Vishal Sareen 3.5 bt CS Unni 2.5; Dipanjan Das 3 drew Sriram Jha 3; D Lakshman Rao 2.5 lost to Sundarajan Kidambi 3.5; Syed Anwar Shazuli 3 drew S Vijayalakshmi 3; Shekar Sahu 3.5 bt Nisha Mohota 2.5; Tejkumar 3 drew PDS Girinath 3; Ramkrishna Kashelkar 3.5 bt M Panigrahi 2.5.