Barua takes lead as Harikrishna loses

Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua beat International Master Sriram Jha to increase his tally to 10 points and emerge the sole leader at the end of the 13th round in the Bharat Petroleum-39th National 'A' chess championship in Nagpur on Tuesday.

Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna, the overnight leader, lost to Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran and slid down the placings. Both players follow the leader with 9.5 points each.

Barua opened with his king pawn and faced the Sicilian Pelican defence of Jha. On the 14th move, Jha offered a draw which Barua refused. Using his queen and three minor pieces in an orchestrated manner Barua raided Jha's king side.

Jha's queen was out of the game, and under time pressure he could not organise any defence. He resigned on the 29th move, when mate became unavoidable.

Harikrishna, playing black against Sasikiran's queen pawn opening, chose a sharp line in Meran variation of Slav defence in which three central pawns were exchanged early. Sasikiran emerged with a pawn to the good. Sasikiran had passed pawns in 'a' and 'b' file.

As Harikrishna had to do something drastic, he took his rook to g4, threatening attack on Sasikiran's king and hoping to weaken Sasikiran's position. However, Sasikiran proved this was shortsighted, when he played f4 and immobilised Harikrishna's rook, and pinned the centralised knight and later sacrificed exchange on the 28th move.