Gandhinagar: In a battle of wits and will, local star Megha Gupta (7.5) created one of the biggest sensations by defeating top seed Orissa player Sunyasakta Satpathy (7) in the 9th round of Under-11 Girls category in 22nd National Chess Championship being played at the Preksha Vidhya Bharti Institute, here today.

Lowly ranked Megha, playing with advantageous white pieces undermined the stature of her mighty opponent, Sunyasakta, and played according to position to clinch the game. In the middle game, Megha won a pawn and maintained it till end to win in a marathon battle of 89 moves. Sunyasakta employed every trick of her arsenal to nullify Megha''s advantage, but her opponent outsmarted all of them.

With this defeat, Sunyasakta has lost her top spot.

Meanwhile, on second board, over night join leader and another local start Sweety Patel scored a brilliant victory over Monnisha G K of Tamil Nadu in Sicilian Defence game to emerge as a sole leader with individual score of 8 points. Sweety and Monnish both fought tooth and nails as they knew that today's victory will give decisive advantage to win championship as just two more rounds to go. However, Lady Luck finally smiled on Sweety, who emerged victorious to give her sole leadership with eight points. While second spot is being held by another local star Megha with 7.5 points.

While, in the boys section yesterday, leader Girish Kaushik of Karnataka won against Cyrus Pereira of Goa to maintain his lead with 8.5 points. Kaushik played with clinical precision to win the long battle after 83 moves. On second board Vaibhav Suri of Delhi won against Sayantan Das of West Bengal in the Guico Piano opening .

The shortest victory of the day recorded on third board when Shardul Garge (Maharashtra) defeated Sidhant Mohapatra of Orissa in just 27 moves.