In a face-off for the title between two Grand Masters, defending champion  Surya Shekhar Ganguly and his beta noir, who upset his smooth run to defend the title, G N Gopal, both representing Petroleum Sports Board, shared the lead with 8.5 points each at the end of the 12th round of Vellammal National ‘A’ chess championshp  here on Thursday.

K Rathnakaran of Railways was breathing down their necks with eight points, forcing a possible three horse race for the crown.

Starting with Sicilian defence against the white side from former national champion and his state-mate Dibyendu Barua, Surya Shekhar Ganguly could not find any break through and played it safe to share the point in 32 moves.

Though M R Venkatesh, the Tamil Nadu player representing PSPB had a slight advantage in the game against the leader and his team-mate G N Gopal of Kerala, he did not want to take any risk. The two players settled for a draw after 40 moves.

S Arun Prasad of PSPB drew with his team mate Abhijit Kunte from Pune.