Nisha Mohota

New Delhi: IM R.R. Laxman clinched a miraculous victory against IM P. Konguvel to continue in joint lead after the sixth round of the 43rd National B chess meet on Sunday.

Laxman (5.5 points) shared the lead withGM R.B. Ramesh and Valay Parikh.

Parikh, defeated K. Rathnakaran in 36 moves, while Laxman beat Konguvel in 65 moves.

Other overnight leaders ? Dronavalli Harika and Diwakar Prasad Singh played out a draw between themselves to slip down to second spot on five points alongside IMs Sriram Jha, Lanka Ravi, IM-to-be Parimarjan Negi, R. Preetham Sharma, Himanshu Sharma and N. Sanjay.

Among the important results on the lower boards, Sriram Jha defeated K. Ramu. Twelve-year-old Negi defeated L. Imocha, while IM T. S. Ravi and WGM Nisha Mohota got back to their winning ways. IM Deepan Chakravarthy spilt the point to slide down to third position with 4.5 points from a possible six.

Laxman will run into Ramesh, who defeated IM norm holder Vikramaditya Kamble.

Nisha got the better of Utpal Barua to be on four points. Third seed B. S. Sivanandan beat Vinod Kumar Sharma, while Suvrajit Saha and Koshy Verghese once again drew their matches.

N. Sanjay of Bangalore registered another comfortable win against Y Dhanabir.