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ndonesian Chelsie Monica Sihite continued her improved performance at the Japfa Women Grandmaster (WGM) Chess Tournament 2013 with a draw and win on Wednesday.

After holding Alina L'ami of Romania in the sixth round in the morning, the 16-year-old upset Sophie Milliet of France in the seventh round in the afternoon. This gives Chelsie an overall 4 points to catch up with her opponent at the top place with was also shared by L'ami and Yulia Kochetkova of Romania.

L'ami made her way up by beating Kochetkova in the tournament, which features two local and four foreign players.

The other local player, Medina Warda Aulia also won after two consecutive losses in the fourth and fifth rounds.

Medina beat Natacha Benmesbah of France but still languishes in fifth place, a point below the leaders and a point above bottom placed Benmesbah.

'Medina took an attacking initiative right from the opening to force a win. Chelsie was two pawns down but she had by then built a position that prompted Sophie to make a fatal blunder,' Kristianus Liem, official of the Indonesian Chess Association (Percasi), told The Jakarta Post.

The tournament adopts double round robin system in which the six participants play each other twice.

Three rounds remain to be played, with Chelsie hoping she can build on her points and collect her second WGM norm, a requirement to attaining the title of WGM.

'We still have three rounds to play and I'll try my best,' she said. Chelsie collected her first WGM norm at the Chess Olympiad in September.

Eka Putra Wirya, a patron of Percasi, believes Chelsie can live up to expectations, but it won't be easy.

For Chelsie to succeed in her bid, she will need to win a third norm in next tournaments.

Percasi has entered Chelsie, along with other players, to compete in a tournament in Philippines next month.

Despite managing to fight her way up, Chelsie looked still rueful about her slip up early in the tournament that saw her lose the opening two games, to L'ami and Milliet

'The positions should have been a draw. Against Milliet I was ahead a bit but I was a bit ambitious and I had to pay for that,' she said.

The eighth Japfa Chess Festival, which runs until Friday, also has matches in several other categories featuring a total of 488 players from 23 provinces.

'More than 500 registered but we had to reject them because we could not accommodate anymore,' event director Hendry Djamal said.