PUNE, Oct 7:
Delhi boy Prince Bajaj played a solid game to hold Grandmaster Duda Jan-Krzysztof of Poland to a creditable draw in the second round of the World Junior Chess Championship here today.
On what turned out to be a good day in office for the Delhi lad, Bajaj gave no chances with black pieces out of a Sicilian Taimanov and the Polish Grandmaster could only trade pieces at regular intervals.
Soon a level rook and minor piece endgame was reached and after 41 moves neither player had any chance. The draw takes Bajaj to 1.5 points out of a possible two.
The more fancied Indians continued with their winning ways although the road was much tougher.
Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi and Sahaj Grover got lucky against Nr Vignesh and K Praneeth Surya respectively while the third Indian GM in the fray Ankit Rajpara had to work quite hard to get full points against Antonio Viani D’cunha.
It was a tough day for the higher ranked players as well as top seeded Russian Vladimir Fedoseev, who was held to a draw by Deac Bogdan-Daniel of Romania while second seed Dutch GM Robin van Kampen decided against an undue risk and signed peace with Bai Jinshi of China.
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