There was not much excitement in round six of the Commonwealth Chess Championship being played at the Siri Fort Stadium with the players exhibiting a solid stance in most games on Thursday. Overnight leader Himanshu Sharma's string of victories was halted with a draw against Arun Prasad on the top board but he nevertheless maintained his sole leader status with 5.5 points in this ten-round Swiss League event.

Chasing with a close distance of just half a point are Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Arun Prasad, Parimarjan Negi, Vikramaditya Kamble,  Lanka Ravi, Dronavalli Harika, R B Ramesh Praveen Thipsay, Sundararajan Kidambi, K Ratnakaran, Abdullah Al-Rakeeb, Sriram Jha and Nisha Mohota.

Top seed Surya Shekhar Ganguly played a superb game to down Bangladeshi Reefat Bin Sattar while third seed Abhijit Kunte squandered winning chances and later escaped with a draw after his opponent, Alexander Wohl also blundered in a winning position.

" It is amazing that we made so many errors on board" said Kunte shaking his head.

Harika played brilliantly to defeat Saravanan while nine-year-old Vaibhav Suri's giant-killing run ended with a defeat against former Women's champion Nisha Mohota.

There were interesting moments however in the game between the most keenly followed player, Negi and Kamble who fought tooth and nail in a complex game before splitting the point.

MS Thej Kumar from Mysore also maintained his unbeaten stint with creditable draw against rising star Abhijeet Gupta.

Mahmood Lodhi  started his game a couple of hours late due to visa problems. Al-Rakeeb could not believe his luck as Lodhi went on a self sacrificing spree without gaining anything in return and won the game after 55 rapidly made moves. 

The French encounter between Ganguly and Sattar was also a rather dull one with both players indulging in manoeuring their own territories after obtaining a closed position.

In fact after an exchange on the 6 th turn, the players went on moving pieces without a single exchange till the 35th turn when Ganguly initiated a pawn exchange. Sattara castled on the queen side while Ganguly kept his King in the centre. However once the game opened up, Ganguly breezed through   even though his opponent's rook had invaded the eighth rank. Ganaguly's pawn thereafter threatened to march to the eighth rank with support, forcing victory on the 66th move.

Round 6 Results: (Indians unless stated):
Arun Prasad (5) drew Himanshu Sharma (5.5); Vikramaditya Kamble (5) drew Parimarjan Negi (5); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (5) bt Reefat Bin Sattar (4.5); Abhijit Kunte (4.5) drew Alexander Wohl (Aus,4.5); Abdullah Al-Rakib bt Mahmood Lodhi (Pak);  Saptarshi Roy (4.5) drew Deepan Chakravarthy (4.5); Harikaa Dronavalli (5) bt V Saravanan (4) ; RB Ramesh (5) bt Roktim Bandopadhyaya (4); R Aswath (4) lt to Praveen Thipsay (5); Abhijeet Gupta (4.5) drew MS Thejkumar (4.5); Ram Prakash (4) lt to Sriram Jha (5); MR Venkatesh (4.5) drew R Premnath (4.5); GB Joshi (4) lt to  Sundararajan Kidambi (5); Nisha Mohota (5) bt Vaibhav Suri (4); K Ratnakaraan bt Antonio D'Cunha.