Humpy, Aarthie in fourth place

Women Grandmasters Koneru Humpy and Aarthie Ramaswamy moved into joint fourth position on five points after the seventh round of the World Junior chess championship in Athens.

The Indians had a very good day on Thursday after a rest day on Wednesday and the only loser was M Kasturi, who succumbed to fifth seed and compatriot Humpy after a rigourous battle.

Double Woman Grandmaster norm holder Aarthie, who is training her sights for the final WGM norm from this tournament, pitched in with another worthy performance and held fourth seed WIM Elisabeth Paehtz to a draw.

Woman International Master S Meenakshi came out of her temporary blues to get the better of Elli Sperdokli of Greece.

The Indian boys too came up with inspired performance and P Magesh Chandran inched a step closer to his maiden IM norm with a draw against IM Michael Roiz of Israel.

Chandran is now on 4.5 points and should he meet the right opposition, even a draw in the next two rounds should give him the IM norm.

Twice Asian Junior champion IM Tejas Bakre defeated Erturan Yakup of Turkmenistan to reach on 4.5 points while M R Venkatesh defeated Krivousas Tomas of Lithuania to take his tally to four points.

Asian junior bronze medallist K Rathnakaran had to be content with a draw against higher rated Joost Berkvens of The Netherlands and reached 3.5 points.

The leader of the boys' section, Sergei Azarov (6) of Belarus, continued to remain half a point adrift of his nearest rivals with a draw against GM Bu Xiangzhi of China.

Four players including Bu and top seed Ni Hua of China trail Azarov on 5.5 points.

In the girls' section, Lilit Mkrtchian of Armenia wrested the lead from overnight leader Kosintseva Nadezhda of Russia. Lilit is on 6 points with Nadezhda and Kosintseva Tatiana of Russia, following at 5.5 points apiece.

Playing white, Humpy opened with her pet King Knight move and the game drifted into a Kings Indian defence. A less-played line in the Fianchetto variation gave Humpy a slight advantage, as Kasturi did not appear familiar with the latest heoretical developments.

Routine manoeuvering ensued and Humpy slowly exerted pressure on both flanks with her long diagonal bishops. Kasturi managed to trade a couple of pieces but failed to solve her problems as Humpy's pieces started to make headway.

Following an erroneous counter-play attempt by Kasturi, Humpy ripped open the king side with a perfectly calculated sequence of moves and pocketed the full point after the 41st move.

Aarthie played it safe against Elisabeth and allowed easy equality from the white side of a Sicilian Paulsen defence game. After surrendering her dark square Bishop, Aarthie knew there was not much in the game for her and settled for the peace in just 25 moves.