Chennai: Woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev of Indian Airlines conducted a pretty king hunt to down Kruttika Nadig of Maharashtra and wrest sole lead in the 33rd Win TV National women's `A' chess championship here on Thursday.

Tania Sachdev, the 20-year-old final year literature student from Delhi, is under an airline scholarship. She leads the 33-player field with seven points from nine rounds. In the second place is Dronavalli Harika (AP) on 6.5 points. A further half-a-point behind are six-time champion S. Vijayalakshmi (IA), former World under-18 champion Aarthie Ramesh (IA), giant killer of round nine Amruta Mokal (Mah) and defending champion Swati Ghate (LIC) on six points. Just two rounds remain in the championship.

Wrong opening phase

Facing Kruttika's Grunfeld defence, Tania Sachdev with white pieces opened the king rook file in the classical variation. Kruttika got the opening phase wrong from move 14 and got into serious trouble from which she did not recover. Aarthie Ramesh handed Swati Ghate her first defeat in a 24-move game from a Ruy Lopez, World under-18 champion Dronavalli Harika ended the winning streak of Chennai girl S. Harini with a 50-move win from a rook ending to move up to the second place.

In the upset of the round, 20-year old Amruta Mokal of Pune shocked WGM Meenakshi by exploiting mistakes to win pawns at random.

The results (round nine): Aarthie Ramesh (IA) 6 bt Swati Ghate (LIC) 6, Tania Sachdev (Del) 7 bt Kruttika Nadig (Mah) 5, Dronavalli Harika (AP) 6.5 bt S. Harini (TN) 5, S. Meenakshi (IA) 5.5 lost to Amruta Mokal (Mah) 6, Nisha Mohota (Ben) 5.5 drew Eesha Karavade (Mah) 5.5, S. Vijayalakshmi (IA) 6 bt I. Ramyakrishna (AP) 4.5, R. Sanggeetha (TN) 5 drew Saheli Nath (Ben) 5, Kiran Mohanty (Ori) 5 bt Swati Mohota (Ben) 4, S. Soumya (Mah) 5 bt Nimmy George (Ker) 4, P. Lakshmi Sahithi (AP) 4 lost to Padmini Rout (Ori) 5, P. Priya (TN) 4 drew Baisakhi Das (Jha) 4.5, H. Nilavoli (TN) 4 drew Bhakti Kulkarni (Goa) 4, Kanuri Tejaswi (AP) 4 drew S. Sujatha (TN) 4, R. Preethi (TN) 3 lost to Sai Meera (TN) 4, N. Raghavi (TN) 3.5 drew Aabha Thakur (Mah) 3, Pon N. Krithikha (TN) 2.5 bt R. Mahima (TN) 3, J.E. Kavitha (TN) 3.5 - bye.

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