Mumbai, June 18: Defending champion S Vijayalakshmi of Indian Airlines scored a brilliant win over Safira Shehnaz of Tamil Nadu in the 11th round of the 26th women's National A chess championship and moved one step closer to her third title in a row at Kalyan on Sunday.After that Safira found herself without any plan and was left completely on to the defensive. Vijayalakshmi efficiently manoeuvred her pieces and built up a dominating pressure. Seeking desperately for counterplay, Safira sacrificed couple of pawns but it brought no relief to her position.Vijayalakshmi combined beautifully and delivered mate to her adversary's exposed king on 39th move.WFM Saheli Dhar Barua of Railways showed good technique while demolishing Y Prathiba of Tamil Nadu and moved to the second position while IWM Swathi Ghate of LIC outwitted IWM Anupama Gokhale of Bharath Petroleum and kept her hopes alive of finishing in the top four places.In yet another match, Pallavi Shah of LIC and S Meenakshi of Tamil Nadu did not wish to take any risks and agreed to split points early in the middlegame arising out of the Pelikan Variation of the Sicilian Defence.With this draw Meenakshi has maintained her joint third position while Pallavi now has to win both of her remaining games to get a place in the Indian team.IWM Bhagyashree Thipsay (IDBI) and world under-18 champion R Aarthi (Wipro) faced little difficulty outplaying their inexperienced opponents Baisakhi Das of West Bengal and S Sujatha of Tamil Nadu respectively.Point position (11th round): S Vijayalakshmi (7.5 pts), Saheli Dhar Barua (7), Swathi Ghate, S Shehnaz, S meenakshi (6.5 pts each), Bhagyashree Thipsay and Pallavi Shah (6 pts each), Anupama Gokhale and R Aarthi (5 pts each), S Sujatha (3.5), Y Prathiba (3), Neha Singh (2.5) and Baisakhi Das (1).
