Another Maharashtra girl, top seed Swati Ghate was lucky to escape with a draw as her Tamil Nadu opponent M R Sangeetha lacked the guts to go for the kill in the endgame.

In the English opening game, Neha's white pieces occupied positions of authority soon after Pallavi Shah messed up her middlegame. With Neha's `d' file passer pawn holding sway, the Bihar girl's double rook (in the `c' and `d' files) and Queen swarmed the rival territory to seal the victory in a jiffy.

MR Sangeetha adopted the Sicilian Pelikan variation against Swati. Instead of castling which could have given her rook room to advance, Swati wasted a Kf1 on the 23rd move. After 34 moves Sangeetha had both her rooks against her rival's knight and rook. Swati lost a pawn on the39th move with a horrendous h5 push.

But Sangeetha's 44th move to go for an unnecessary rook exchange helped Swati's `c' file pawn gain a clear path ahead. With Swati's knight protecting her `c' pawn, Sangeetha was forced to agree for the draw after 58 moves.

Important Results

Swati Ghate 4 drew M R Sangeetha 4, Neha Singh 4.5 bt Pallavi Shah 3.5, Nisha Mohota 4 bt J E Kavitha 3, Sasinas Haritha 4 bt Y Prathibha 3, J Megha 3 lost to Manasi Dadarkar 4, Aswini Pachapurkar 3.5 drew Aarthie Ramaswamy 3, S Cynthia 3 drew K Preethi 3, Pazha Sivakami 3 drew M Priyadarshini 3, Shraddha Samani 3.5 bt B Sini 2.5, Pannaga Magal 3.5 bt Eesha Karvade 2.5, Isai Amudhu 2 lost to Chitra Sridhar 3, S Sujatha 3 bt T T Lakshmi Priya 2, H Nilavoli 3 bt P Priya 2, Preeti Bisoi 2 lost to M Kasthuri 3, Madonna Fullmoon 2 lost to N Sandhya 3.