International woman master Anupama Gokhale of Bharat Petroleum scored a facile victory over Karnataka state champion PR Rekha in one of the shortest games on the top tables.

Ravi enjoyed an advantage on the queen side against Natarajan's Torre attack. He managed to win a pawn but allowed Natarajan's bishops to become powerful in the process. Natarajan played the final part with precision to hand a shocking defeat to the second seed.

RESULTS

Third round (points in brackets): RB Ramesh (3) beat R Saimeera (2); C Natarajan (3) beat TS Ravi (2); BT Muralikrishna (3) beat S Meenakshi (2); R Arathi (3) beat RR Laxman (2); Sethuraman (2.5) drew with K Gopalakrishna (2.5); AL Kasi (3) beat N Venkataraman (2); PR Rekha (2) lost to Anupama Gokhale (3); TK Chandrasekhar (3) beat Bipul Nandy (2); A Shankar (3) beat Arjun Tiwary (2)