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.
With 11 rounds still to come, the Indian GM trio of Gujrathi, Grover and Rajpara maintain a clean slate with two victories apiece and are among leaders. Gujrathi reached what was a drawn endgame against Vignesh but the latter lost his way with the clock ticking away.
Grover was much worse out of the opening against Surya but held on to his own to hit back in the time scramble. The complexities were still there when Grover reached a pawn plus rook and pawns endgame but Surya could not find the way to safety.
