G B Prakash maintains sole lead

Grandmaster norm holder G B Prakash of Indian Bank maintained his excellent form to beat N Sanjay of Karnataka in the eighth round of the 5th Global Trust Bank International Rating chess tournament in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Prakash leads the 362-player field with 7.5 points and is followed by IMs Ravi Hegde of Union Bank and Anup Deshmukh of LIC and IM norm holder Jayant Gokhale of Bharat Petroleum all of whom have 7 points.

Prakash played the Slav defence and a rather offbeat choice by Sanjay transposed the game to a harmless variation of the Queens Gambit Accepted.

Prakash was well-armed and showed his in-depth opening preparation to get a balanced position in the middlegame. Sanjay made an error by trading the queens and Prakash got a slight advantage thanks to his better pawn structure.

The timing was important thereafter and Prakash slowly squeezed out the defensive resources of Sanjay to craft a fine victory.

Anup got the better of his LIC counterpart Atanu Lahiri in the Advance variation of the French defence. Playing white Anup got a miniscule advantage after the opening and went for an attack against the King after Atanu opted for giving up his right to castle.

The middlegame took an exciting turn as Atanu started making headway on the queenside while Anup increased his pressure on the other flank. In the end Anup's exploits proved tougher than Atanu's anticipation.

Jayant Gokahle was at his attacking best against Tamil Nadu youngster M R Venkatesh in an English opening game with white pieces.

Venkatesh employed a set-up akin to the Queen's Indian defence and never looked at ease once Jayant got a firm control in the center. Venkatesh burnt his own bridge as he went for tactical complications that involved the sacrifice of two pawns in the center.

Jayant thwarted the attempts with his ice-cool chess and registered an emphatic victory.

International Master P Konguvel of ONGC came back into contention for top honours with a hard-earned victory over International Women Master Anupama Gokhale of Bharat Petroleum.

In the Grunfeld Indian defence where Konguvel was black, Anupama played actively and the position became extremely complicated in the middlegame.

Konguvel too took the bull by its horns and launched an attack along the central files that helped him to exert pressure on white's kingside weaknesses. Anupama succumbed to the pressure in time scramble

Tamil Nadu's Poobesh Anand defeated Hari Om Sharma of UP to Join Konguvel along with five others on 6.5 points. In an irregular opening Poobesh tactically outplayed Hari in the Queenless middlegame.

Ravi Hegde scored a fluent victory over M Y Raju of Andhra Pradesh while erstwhile joint leader Y Kalyan Kumar (AP) suffered his second successive loss in the tournament, going down to IM Sekhar Sahu of Union Bank.