Prakash, Deshmukh in close race

Grandmaster-norm holder G B Prakash of Indian Bank maintained his slender half point lead with a quick draw against International Master P Konguvel of ONGC after the 10th and penultimate round in the Global Trust Bank International Rating chess tournament in Hyderabad on Thursday.

Prakash has thus far accumulated nine points in his kitty and is followed by IM Anup Deshmukh of LIC who has 8.5 points. A 'battle royale' between these two is expected when they meet on friday.

Anup did not have to sweat much as he got a walkover against IM Sekhar Sahu of Union Bank.

Six players -- IMs P Konguvel, Ravi Gopa Hegde (Union Bank), Lanka Ravi (ONGC), Neelotpal Das (Goodrick National Chess Academy), triple IM norm holders P D S Girinath (AP) and Jayant Gokhale of Bharat Petroleum -- share the next set of positions, with 8 points each to their credit.

Another 11 players follow this pack on 7.5 points.

Lanka Ravi was in his element on Thursday as he made short work of Bihar's Santosh Kumar Sinha in an English Opening game with black pieces.

Santosh let Ravi equalise comfortably and handed the initiative on a platter by allowing a protected passed pawn on the sixth rank by the 25th move. Ravi had no difficulty in converting his positional superiority into a full point.

Neelotpal tactically outplayed his less known opponent Ram Krishna in a Nimzowitsch defense game with white pieces.

A well-crafted pawn onslaught on the kingside enabled Neelotpal to launch a queenside attack and Ram had to give an exchange sacrifice to stay in the game. Neelotpal, however, easily thwarted the counterplay to register an emphatic victory.

Jayant Gokhale played excellent moves in the middlegame to beat the Tarrasch defense of R Balasubramanium of Railways.

Playing white, Jayant capitalised on an erroneous opening plan by his opponent and exerted pressure on the weak queen pawn.

Balasubramanium remained clueless for major part of the game and went for the trade of Queens that left his position defenseless.

Jayant won two pieces against his rook and the rest was child's play.

In a keenly contested game arising from Accelerated Dragon defense, S Satyapragyan of Indian Airlines held Ravi Hegde to a draw while J K Chowdhury of Bihar proved no match to Girinath.