Bangalore: Firmly setting her eyes on the title with only two rounds remaining, Nisha Mohota scored a splendid win to lead the table with eight points after the end of the 11th round in the 31st National Women?s A chess championship on Wednesday.

Top seed Nisha came up with good opening preparation playing white side of a Nimzo Indian defence against MR Sangeetha of Tamil Nadu. Soon after the opening phase, Nisha opened the position where she could use the strength of bishop in an open board against her opponent?s knight.

She made use of a passed pawn in the centre, although everything was equal, to carve a win in 37 moves.

Mary Ann Gomes played the white side of Reti opening where white moved the knight, against Bhagyashree Thipsay, and maintained a better position from the opening and managed to create two passed pawns on the queenside in the ending against one passed pawn for black on the kingside.

Bhagyashree used her experience to defend this position to earn a hard fought draw.

In an interesting match, WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy of Indian Airlines, playing black, scored a crucial win against WGM Swathi Ghate of LIC, to be in the race for top places.

Aarthie played the Sicilian defence as black and entered the middle game with play on the d-file. Swathi, who usually plays attacking game, chose not to exchange the queens which resulted in Aarthie creating major threats against the king and finish the game in style.