International Master Deepan Chakravarthy handed Nguyen Van Huy of Vietnam his third defeat on the trot to remain in joint lead with S Arun Prasad, who beat Abhijeet Gupta, after the seventh round of the 27th Asian Junior Chess championship at Bikaner on Monday.
Chakravarthy and Prasad have now taken their tally to an impressive 5.5 points.
IM S Poobesh Anand held the third spot on five points after he was held to a draw by Arghyadip Das.
Next in line was National Junior Champion G N Gopal, who also caused a flutter, defeating top seed IM Anton Filippov of Uzbekistan.
Also sharing the fourth spot were G Rohit, Arghyadip Das and Abhijeet Gupta who all have 4.5 points each in their kitty as four rounds remain to be played in this prestigious annual event.
In the girls' section, the race for the title resumed between Woman Grandmaster Dronavalli Harika and Vietnam's Hoang Thi Bao Tram.
And as expected, both came out with flying colours.
Harika was fiercer of the two in her victory over Pratibha while Tram matched Mary Ann Gomes' technical skills in style.
Harika and Tram have moved to six points out of a possible seven and are now followed by Soumya Swaminathan who stands a full point behind.
It turned out to be a good day for Deepan as he almost outplayed Huy from a level endgame arising out of a Scotch opening.
Playing black, Deepan had little trouble in equalising and thereafter both players strove for counterplay along the centre. However, as the pieces got exchanged in a heap, Deepan found his Knight much better placed than his opponent's Bishop and perfect calculation thereon decided the game quickly in his favour.
Arun Prasad played a controlled game to get the better of Gupta who was out of sorts in the Italian opening as black.
Winning an exchange in middle game complexities, Prasad never looked back and romped home with perfect play in the endgame.
The women's section saw Harika beat Pratibha while Tram went on to win a theoretical drawn endgame against Gomes.
Playing black, the country's youngest ever WGM caught a white Knight napping in her territory and trapped it in quick time in the early middle game. Pratibha fought in vain in the piece down position hoping for a miracle that did not happen as Harika won in 58 moves.
