Nihal Sarin, 10, catches eye with draw against higher ranked player

 The top two seeds – Vladimir Fedoseev of Russia and Robin Van Kampen of The Netherlands – were held to a draw in their second round of matches by Daniel Bogdan Deac and Jinshi Bai of China, respectively, at the World Junior Chess Championships in Pune on Tuesday.

In the girls section also, defending champion and top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina was held to a draw by Maria Gevorgyan of Armenia.

Amongst the Indians, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and Padmini Rout notched up their second straight victories in their respective sections. Padmini carved an easy victory while Gujrathi had to bring all his expertise and experience against compatriot Vignesh Nr in a hard fought tussle lasting 60 moves.

Ten-year-old Nihal Sarin, who created a sensational upset on the opening day on Monday, created another flutter on Tuesday when he held higher ranked and rated IM Tadeas Kriebel to a draw in another marathon game lasting 88 moves.

At the end of two rounds, 16 players lead with two points each with Indians Sahej Grover, Ankit Rajpara, Diptayan Ghosh , Shardul Gagare, S L Narayanan, Sayantan Das giving Gujrathi company.

GM Van Kampen Robin of The Netherlands was held to a draw by Jinshi Bai of China. The players battled it out in a Sicilian defence for 26 moves and sealed the draw by repetition of moves.

Prince Bajaj of India also performed creditably to draw against sixth ranked Polish GM Karen Duda Jan-Krzysztof.