Himanshu Sharma jumps to sole lead

NAGPUR: Top seed Himanshu Sharma broke from the group to jump to sole lead at the end of the sixth round in the GH Raisoni Memorial FIDE Rating Chess tournament at Ambedkar Management Institute Hall here on Monday.
International Master Sharma maintained his winning streak to take his points tally to six. Nagpur’s Akash Thakur and Saurabh Kherdekar and Sayan Bose shared the second spot with 5.5 points each.
On the top board, Sharma, playing with white pieces, downed Ram Krishnan in a marathon battle. On the second board, Thakur opened with e4. His opponent Debarshi Mukharjee replied by playing C5 Sicilian Defense (Schevningn variation). Thakur won the sixth round encounter in 48 moves.
Earlier in the fifth round, Debarshi Mukharjee shocked Prince Bajaj.
RESULTS (Round 6): Himanshu Sharma (6) bt Ram S Krishnan (5), Akash Thakur (5.5) bt Debarshi Mukherjee (5), Sayan Bose (5.5) bt Soumya Thakurta (4.5), Sahil Tickoo (4.5) lost to Saurabh Kherdekar (5.5), Shailesh Dravid (5) drew with Divya Garg (5), Prince Bajaj (5) bt Yashwant Shamkuwar (4), S Prasannaa (5) bt Vishal Didwania (4), VK Srivastava (4) lost to Pawan Dodeja (5), Shantanu Bhambure (5) bt Om Vinay Vitalkar (4), Pratik Mulay (5) bt Shrutika Prachand (4), Pravind Hend (5) bt T Chandran (4), Harshita Guddanti (4.5) drew with Shubh Chandak (4.5), Kawaljeet Singh Maras (4.5) drew with Sankalp Gupta (4.5), Saral Sonwane (4) lost to Ansuman Samal (5).