R. Vaishali maintained her sole lead in the Women’s Candidates chess tournament by scoring a crucial win over Aleksandra Goryachkina in the 11th round at Pegeia, Cyprus, on Saturday. The victory took her tally to seven points, with just three rounds remaining.

Fellow-Indian Divya Deshmukh did Vaishali a favour by holding her strongest rival Zhu Jiner to a draw. The top seed from China now has six points and is sharing the second spot with Anna Muzychuk as the Chennai Grandmaster increased her lead to one point.

In a rook-and-minor-piece ending, it was a blunder with her bishop by Goryachkina that proved the turning point. Vaishali capitalised on that error and went an exchange up.

The Russian gave up, with checkmate not far away.

In the open section, Javokhir Sindarov maintained his commanding two-point lead after drawing with second seed Fabiano Caruana.

The 20-year-old Uzbek has eight points, while Anish Giri, who drew with Andrey Esipenko, has six. All the four games in the open section were drawn.

The results (11th round): Anish Giri (Ned) 6.5 drew with Andrey Esipenko (Rus) 4; Hikaru Nakamura (USA) 5 drew with Wei Yi (Chn) 5; Fabiano Caruana (USA) 5.5 drew with Javokhir Sindarov (Uzb) 8.5; R. Praggnanandhaa 4.5 drew with Matthias Bluebaum (Ger) 5.

Women: Kateryna Lagno (Rus) 5.5 drew with Anna Muzychuk (Ukr) 6; Tan Zhongyi (Chn) 4 drew with Bibisara Assaubayeva (Kaz) 5.5; Zhu Jiner (Chn) 6 drew with Divya Deshmukh 5; Aleksandra Goryachkina (Rus) 5 lost to R. Vaishali 7.