Anastasia Dobromyslova came close to beating Wayne Mardle on the second day of the PartyPoker.com Grand Slam of Darts.
The Women's World Champion battled back from the brink of defeat with finishes of 116 and 120 to level the scores, only to miss out in the deciding leg of the game.
The Russian, who lost to John Part on Saturday, needs the Canadian to defeat Kevin McDine on Sunday evening to stay mathematically in the tournament, before facing the youngster on Monday in her final group game.
"She was better than me and I got away with it," admitted Mardle. "I needed to win that because I'm slightly off form at the moment and that alone made it tough for me.
"It was always going to be hard anyway, Anastasia's a great player and deservedly the Women's World Champion, but I managed to hit some doubles when I needed to."
The second day of group games in the tournament saw WDF number one Gary Anderson claim a superb win over Kevin Painter.
Anderson lost to newcomer Paul Nicholson on Saturday but hit five doubles from seven attempts in a high-quality 5-2 victory.
Simon Whitlock, Gary Mawson, Mark Webster and Adrian Lewis all bounced back from losses on the opening day with 5-0 whitewashes, while Vincent van der Voort was a 5-1 winner against Phill Nixon.
Terry Jenkins won his battle with Colin Lloyd in Group F with a 5-3 victory to leave the former World Matchplay champion's hopes hanging by a thread.