Ahmedabad: Top seed GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly inched closer to his fourth consecutive title, when he defeated IM D P Singh in the 11th round of the 44th National Chess Championship here Wednesday.

Surya has left the field behind by half-a-point with a score of 8 and barring some major upsets in the last two rounds is slated to win the title.

Surya, playing black, accepted the pawn in the Queen’s Gambit Opening, which led to a very dynamic position. He handled the position with precise accuracy by posting his pieces on good squares and gained an advantage in the middle-game by winning a pawn on the 25th move.

However, it appeared that the extra material was not sufficient in the rock and pawn and the game appeared to be drifting towards draw, but D P Singh made elementary mistakes in the end leading to his loss.

The other overnight leader, GM Deepan Chakravarthy, who drew his game with GM Neelotpal Das, is now trailing Surya by half-a-point with a score of 7.5. The third spot is occupied by newly crowned IM G N Gopal and Arun Prasad with a score of seven points each.

One more noteworthy performance was completion of the third and final IM norm by Somak Palit of West Bengal. He, though is still away from his title. His Elo rating is below the 2400 mark. He drew against Praveen Thipsay.