The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Memorable win for Harikrishna

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Thursday, Nov 25, 2004

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Sport - Chess

Memorable win for Harikrishna

By Stan Rayan

KOCHI, NOV. 24. P. Harikrishna may be perched five rungs above Koneru Humpy in the Indian men's rankings. He may have an advantage of a 100 Elo points over his Andhra Pradesh State-mate but till today had never beaten the country's top girl in a game of chess. All this changed at the boys junior Worlds.

Despite feeling the pressure, Harikrishna scored a memorable victory over Humpy. He had stopped the girl who was wreaking havoc in the boys' field here and as a just reward, he got the sole lead after the eighth round in this 13-round championship.

And yes, you could clearly see the relief on his shy face. "My last two games against Humpy were drawn," said the 18-year-old Harikrishna. He had signed the peace treaty at the 2002 British Open and the 2003 National `A'. The clash of the country's two youngest Grandmasters was a keen one, especially since Humpy had upset the top-seeded Ferenc Berkes of Hungary on Tuesday.

The 17-year-old Humpy gained the opening edge with the white pieces and this seemed to be working on Harikrishna's mind. He hoped for a draw with a knight manoeuvre on the 14th move. Humpy halted the knight sacrifice but offered an exchange of queens on the 16th turn. But this soon turned against her in the endgame.

A happy Harikrishna used the good knight to telling effect, winning the pawn on the 25th move and the game 11 moves later. "I surprised Humpy with Bg4, we use it very rarely. Generally, it's not a very sound variation," said Harikrishna.

Meanwhile, after walking aimlessly through the last few rounds, the top-seeded Russian Ekaterina Korbut came up with her biggest victory in the girls Worlds. She defeated overnight leader Anna Ushenina of Ukraine in 83 moves after grabbing a bishop in the minor pieces ending.

Korbut, who drew four of her first seven games, has now joined the leaders with six points. She has Ushenina and German Elisabeth Paehtz for company.

Important results (eighth round, Indians unless stated): Boys: Zhao Jun (Chn, 6.5) drew with Tigran L. Petrosian (Arm, 6.5), Koneru Humpy (5.5) lost to P. Harikrishna (7), Evgeny Alekseev Vladimirovich (Rus, 6) bt Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Pol, 5), David Smerdon (Aus, 5) lost to Yuri Drozdovsky (Ukr, 5.5), Ferenc Berkes (Hun, 5) drew with Vlad-Cristian Jianu (Rom, 5), Elshan Moradiabadi (Ira, 5) drew with Timur Gareyev (Uzb, 5), Oliver Barbosa (Phi, 4.5) lost to Erwin l'Ami (Ned, 5.5), Yunieski Quezada Perez (Cub, 5) drew with Deepan Chakravarthy (5), Mateusz Bartel (Pol, 4.5) lost to Deep Sengupta (Ind, 5.5), Leandro Perdomo (Arg, 5) drew

with M.R.Venkatesh (5), Mark Paragua (Phi, 5) bt Poobesh Anand (4.5), Dasari Sai Srinivas (5) bt Abhijeet Gupta (4).

Girls: Ekaterina Korbut (Rus, 6) bt Anna Ushenina (Ukr, 6), Eesha Karavade (5.5) drew with Elisabeth Paehtz (Ger, 6), Zhang Jilin (Chn, 5) drew with Saheli Nath (5.5), N. Vinuthna (5.5) bt Dana Aketayeva (Kaz, 4.5), Shaesteh Ghader Pour (Iri, 4.5) lost to J.E. Kavitha (5.5), Alina Motoc (Rom, 5) bt Aleksandra Mijovic (Scg, 4), Tania Sachdev (5) bt Paloma Gutierrez (Esp, 4), N. Raghavi (4.5) drew with Joanna Majdan (Pol, 4.5), Marlies Bensdorp (Ned, 4.5) drew with Siti Zulaikha (Mas, 4.5), Stiri Alexandra (Gre, 3.5) drew with Kruttika Nadig (4), Koneru Chandra Hawsa (3.5) lost to Anastasiya Gutsko (Ukr, 4), Jennifer Perez (Cub, 4) bt Nimmy George (Ind, 3).

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