asian tournament

Panda, left, and Grebnev during their fourth round clash.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

JAMSHEDPUR

Sambit Panda held top seed Aleksey Grebnev to a draw, but he wasn’t pleased with the result, though.

The second board clash between Manish Cristiano and Rohith S. Krishna was also drawn, and that left Dilshan Liyanage of Sri Lanka and Gilbert Tarigan of Indonesia in the lead position after the fourth round of the Tata Steel Asian junior chess championship here on Monday.

They have 3.5 points apiece and are followed half-a-point by 12 players, including Panda, who had looked better placed after playing from the white side of a Vienna Game.

“I was a pawn up, and should have been able to build on the advantage,” he said.

In the girls’ section, second seed Saina Salonika, third seed Bommini Mounika Akshaya, G. Tejaswini and V. Rindhiya, all representing the host, are leading the table with 3.5 points.

Five rounds remain.

Important results (fourth round, Indians unless specified):

Open: Sambit Panda 3 drew with Aleksey Grebnev (FIDE) 3; Manish Cristiano 3 drew with Rohith S. Krishna 3; Gilbert Tarigan (Idn) 3.5 bt N.B. Harimadhavan 2.5; Kushagra Mohan 3 drew with Ayush Sharma 3; Abilmansur Abdilkhair (Kaz) 2.5 lost to Dilshan Liyanage (SL) 3.5; G.B. Harshavardhan 3 drew with M. Mohamed Anees 3; L.R. Srihari 3 bt Dhyey Agarwal 2; Alekhya Mukhopadhyay 3 bt Daakshin Arun 2; Ritvik Krishnan 3 bt Zia Tajwar (Ban) 2; Reja Neer Manon (Ban) 2.5 drew with Yash Bharadia 2.5; Siddhant Jha 2 lost to L. Srihari 3.

Girls: V. Rindhiya 3.5 drew with Bommini Mounika Akshaya 3.5; Shubhi Gupta 3 drew with Nazerke Nurgali (Kaz) 3; Saina Salonika 3.5 bt Keerti Reddy 2.5; Bhagyashree Patil 3 drew with Mrittika Mallick 3; Zeinep Sultanbek 2 lost to G. Tejaswini 3.5; Marium Fatima 2.5 drew with L. Jyothsna 2.5; Saparya Ghosh 2 lost to Ayaulym Kaldarova (Kaz) 3; Mohitha Vakcheri 2 lost to Bristy Mukherjee 3; Wadifa Ahmed (Ban) 3 bt Swara Lakshmi S. Nair 2; Divya Patil 3 bt Sachi Jain 2; Dahamdi Sanudula (SL) 3 bt A. Charvi 8; Anastasia Ivanova (FIDE) 1.5 lost to Kriti Patil 3.