Mary Ann Gomes looks unstoppable after the sixth round of the Asian junior girls chess championship. On Tuesday, she defeated P Priya with ease to take her score to a fantastic 6/6, inching closer to the title and her third and final WGM norm.

Mary has been totally dominating this event and has never been in danger in any of the games so far. Things however were not so smooth for the Iranian WIM and top seed Atousa Pourkashiyan as she crashed to her second defeat, losing to Kiran Manisha Mohanty.

Padmini Rout was rather lucky to earn a point against S Harini where she was always on the inferior side.

Padmini and Kiran Manisha, with 4.5 points, are 1.5 points behind Mary. On Wednesday, Mary takes on Manisha in what should be a close contest.

In the open section, there is a change in guard with Vishnu Prasanna losing to Ashwin Jayram in a sensational game. Vishnu Prasanna, seeded 14th, had notched five victories on the trot and had upset a few seeds en-route .

P Karthikeyan defeated higher-rated B Adhiban while top seed Parimarjan Negi is now one of the four leaders along with Vihsnu Prasanna, Ashwin and P Karthikeyan. Parimarjan made winning look easy against Lalith Babu.

The race for the title is still wide open in this section.

French defence

After experimenting with new openings, Mary stuck to her French defence and was rather surprised when her opponent opted for a side variation which is sort of a reverse psychology. However, it was Priya who messed up her opening line and her game went awry on the 11th turn. Thereafter, a further miscalculation had Priya offering her queen for one rook, after which she never recovered and went down in 33 moves. "Priya did try to surprise me in the opening but she forgot the opening lines," said Mary.

Atousa adopted the Sicilian against Manisha and did appear to have equalised the position. However, in the ending she had two pieces for a rook while her opponent had an extra pawn. Manisha may probably have missed an easier route to victory, still made it after 72 moves.

Results (Round 6): Vishnu Prasanna (5) lost to Ashwin Jayram (5); Lalith Babu (4) lost to Parimarjan Negi (5); B Adhiban (4) lost to P Karthikeyan (5); Deep Sengupta ( 4.5) bt Aditya Udeshi (3.5); Meghan Gupte (3.5) lost to Shyam Sundar (4.5); T Purushothaman (4) bt Javad Alavi (3); Sagar Shah (3) lost to P Sethuraman (4); Sahaj Grover (3.5) drew with Akshat Khamparia (3.5); Swayam Mishra (3) lost to K Priyadarshan (4); Bitan Bannerjee (4) bt Y D B Madugalle (3).

Girls: P Priya (3.5) lost to Mary Ann Gomes (6); S Harini (3.5) lost to Padmini Rout (4.5); Kiran Manisha Mohanty (4.5) bt Atousa Porkashiyan (3); Pon Kruthika (3) lost to P Sivasankari (4); Krutika Nadig ( 2.5) lost to Soumya Swaminathan (3.5); Mitali Patil (2) lost to Shamima Liza Akter (3); P Uthra (3)  bt Bhakti Juikar (1.5); Sriharika Y G (2.5) lost to Tara Rahimi (2); Mohana Priya ( 2.5) bt Sonakshi Rathore (0.5).