Nandini Saripalli and Mohinish Naik clinched hard-fought wins in the fifth round of the Monginis 46th National ‘B’ chess championships played at the Damodar Sausthan in Zambaulim.

At the end of the fifth round, Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi and P Shyam Nikhil shared the lead with five points each. The duo runs into each other in the sixth round.

Nandini (ELO 1844), a student of Bhatikar High School, won a long drawn battle with higher-rated Pradip Kumar Choudhary (ELO 2082) of Tripura.

Adopting the Colle system, Nandini needed 62 moves to pocket the full point. Unrated 13-year-old, Mohinish conjured more magic as he outwitted Rahul Karnani (ELO 1894) to cement his chances of a superior initial FIDE rating in the January 2009 list.

Kishore Bandekar fought back from a losing position to beat Vigneshraj Muthuram (ELO 1720) of Tamil Nadu in a 62-move Sicilian defence game.

Among the top seeds, Grandmaster Neelotpal Das (2462) of PSPB was shocked by AB Shivanand of Karnataka.
In a Sicilian opening, the Karnataka lad demolished his opponent in just 62 moves.

Others results (fifth round): Anurag Mhamal lt to V Saravanan; Bhakti Kulkarni lt to Projit Phukan; Sukanya Chari bt Pankaj Borah; Niraj Saripalli bt Arvindu.