Barath holds Bharathakoti to share lead

NAGPUR: A day after he jumped to the joint lead, unseeded Kalyan Barath held second seed Harsha Bharathakoti to maintain the top slot with four others after Round 8 of the 27th National Under-13 Chess Tournament currently in progress at Arumuga Thirumananilayam in Pondicherry on Friday.
The national tourney is being organized by Pondicherry State Chess Association on behalf of All India Chess Federation (AICF).Playing with the white pieces on the second board, unseeded Barath from Tamil Nadu made good use of his opening advantage to force the second seed Andhra Pradesh master Bharathakoti to sign the peace treaty.
Both the players agreed to share the honours in just 26 moves. On the top board, top seed Abhimanyu Puranik from Maharashtra split the points with third seed KS Raghunandan of Karnataka.
The third table witnessed a clear winner when Chhattisgarh's Dhananjay S made light work of his lower ranked opponent S Jayakumar from Tamil Nadu. At the end of the 8th round five players including Abhimanyu Puranik, KS Raghunandan, Kalyan Barath, Harsha Bharathakoti and S Dhananjay share the lead with 6.5 points. Half-a-point behind, the leaders are being closely followed closely by five masters.
Results (round 8)
Abhimanyu Puranik (6.5) drew with KS Raghunandan (6.5), Kalyan M Barath (6.5) drew with Harsha Bharathakoti (6.5), S Dhananjay (6.5) bt S Jayakumar (5.5), Rajaryan Kuvelkar (6) drew with AR Harikrishnan (6), Hemanth Raam (5.5) lost to Y Grahesh (6), PR Hirthickkesh (6) bt Shet Prajwal (5), Kumar Gaurav (5.5) drew with Srijit Paul (5.5), Mehta Jwalin (6) bt Siva Mahadevan (5), Swain Diptanshu Ranjan (5.5) drew with Sadhu S Adithya (5.5), MY Aditya (5.5) drew with Trinav Rattan (5.5).