Chennai: Bharath Petroleum's International Master V Saravanan maintained his sole lead when he drew with R Balasubramaniam of Integral Coach Factory in the eighth and penultimate round of the Dr N Mahalingam Sathabishekam FIDE Rated Open Chess tournament on Thursday.

Saravanan is now placed on the top with seven points, half a point ahead of Balasubramaniam and K Visweswaran of Chennai On Line. Twelve other players are in third spot with six points each.

Against Saravanan's queen pawn opening, Balasubramaniam preferred Slav defence. After the opening, he captured white's 'f2' pawn. In the pawn up game, the ICF player chose a wrong variation, which landed in the opposite colour bishop ending.

Though he had an extra passer on the seventh rank, he could not convert it into a win as the position was a theoretically drawn ending. so the game was drawn on the 57th move.

Deepan Chakravorthy was lucky to survive a lost game against K Gunasekar (ICF) after the latter made a draw offer in a clearly won position. In the advance variation of the Caro Kann defence, Gunasekaran allowed white to penetrate his zone.

By a clever trap, he swallowed white's rook for his bishop. He also maintained an extra pawn, but fearing that he might overstep the time limit, made a draw offer on the 30th move, which was accepted by Deepan.

PTI