NAGPUR: Raunak Sadhwani and Divya Deshmukh drew their respective seventh round games in contrasting fashion in the Masters group of the 30th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival on Thursday.
While Nagpur's first Grandmaster (GM) Raunak defended well with his black pieces to play out a quick draw with 14th seed Volodar Murzin, world junior girls champion Divya tried many tricks to snatch full point but Vietnam's lower ranked FM Banh Gia Huy forced the 18-year-old to split the points.
From Wednesday's seven joint leaders, five masters played out a draw while 13th seeded Uzbekistan GM Vokhidov Shamsiddin outclassed India's Pranav V to garner full points and take sole lead.
On the second board, Raunak chose an unorthodox line against Murzin's queen pawn opening. With almost equal pieces and pawns left on the board, both the players agreed to share the points on the 26th move. With this draw the 18-year-old Raunak is now sharing the second position with seven others collecting 5.5 points.
On the 34th table, Divya failed to utilize her opening advantage with the white pieces and played out a marathon 81-move draw against Vietnam's Huy. In an English opening game, Divya tried many tricks in the middle game but Huy played passively.
In the rook endgame with three inactive pawns for both the players, the marathon five-hour contest ended in a draw.
In the penultimate round, Raunak will square up against tournament's sole leader and Uzbekistan's 2643 Elo GM Vakhidov Shamsiddin while Divya will be up against Indian IM Srihari L.
