Woman Grandmaster and top seed Dronavalli Harika came back in to reckoning for top honours after beating Sona Petrova of Czech Republic in the fourth round of the World Junior girls’ chess championship here.

Playing black, it turned out to be a hard day for Harika as she had to fight 85 grueling moves before overcoming Petrova, who played the white side of a Grunfeld defence. It was energetic play in the middle game that netted Harika a pawn and later although Petrova managed to get what was a theoretically drawn rook endgame, it was always a difficult defence. The Indian girls had a reasonable day again as Eesha Karavade played out a draw on the second board against Sopiko Guramishvili of Georgia.


Important results round 4: (Indians unless specified): Maxim Rodshtein (Isr, 3.5) drew with So Wesley (Phi, 3.5); David Howell (Eng, 3.5) drew with Daniel Stellwagen (Ned, 3); Wang Hao (Chn, 3) drew with Ivan Popov (Rus, 3); Arman Pashikian (Arm, 3) drew with Viktor Laznicka (Cze, 3); G N Gopal (3) drew with Gawain Jones (Eng, 3); Parimarjan Negi (2.5) lt to Dmitry Andreikin (Rus, 3); Adly Ahmed (Egy, 3) bt Abhishek Das (2); Maxat Alaguzov (Kaz, 2) lt to Deepan Chakkravarthy (3); Dzurabek Khamrakulov (Uzb, 3) bt G Rohit (2); Ashwin Jayaram  (2.5) bt Thibaut Vandenbussche (Bel, 1.5); Abhijeet Gupta (2) bt Leonardo Fusco (Arg, 1); Dagur Arngrimsson (Isl, 2) bt R Arun Karthik (1).

Girls: Vera Nebolsina (Rus, 4) bt Bela Khotenashvili (Geo, 3); Sopiko Guramishvili (Geo, 3.5) drew with Eesha Karavade (3.5); Tatevik Airapetian (Arm, 2.5) lt to Sarah Hoolt (Ger, 4); Sabrina Vega Gutierrez (Esp, 3.5) bt Mongontuul Bathuyag (Mgl, 2.5); Sona Pertlova (Cze, 2) lt to D Harika (3); Jolanta Zawadzka (Pol, 3) bt Haritomeni Markantonaki (Gre, 2); Mary Ann Gomes (2.5) drew with Lia Martirosian (Arm, 2.5); Simona Limontaite (Ltu, 3) bt Diana Arutyunova (Ukr, 2); P Priya (2) lt to Tatev Abrahamyan (Usa, 3); Nune Darbinyan (Arm, 2) lt to Soumya Swaminathan (3); Padmini Rout (3) bt Narine Ghazaryan (Arm, 2).