Sandhya continues to sparkle

By Our Sports Reporter

KOZHIKODE, DEC. 25. A 15-year-old local lass is fast proving to be quite a headache for the seeds in the 15th National junior girls' chess championship. N. Sandhya, just a day after shocking the fourth seed Ashwini Kulkarni of Maharashtra, caused another major upset when she beat M. R. Sangeetha of Tamil Nadu, the sixth seed who was the runner- up in this competition two years ago, at the V.K. Krishna Menon Indoor Stadium on Monday.

The fine win took the Kerala girl to the top position, which she shares with third seed Manasi Dadarkar of Maharashtra. After round three, the two girls have the full three points. They are followed half-a-point behind by the top seed S. Meenakshi of Indian Airlines, second seed Y. Prathiba of Tamil Nadu and H. Niranjana Devi of T. Nagar Chess Academy, Chennai.

Five more rounds remain to be played. On Tuesday in two crucial games, Sandhya takes on Manasi on the top board, and Prathiba meets Meenakshi on the second board.

On the top board today, Sandhya began with Reti Opening and converted it into a King's Indian Attack. She had an advantage in space to begin with. She did not waste time to launch a powerful attack on the king-side, thanks to her well activated pieces. Though she overlooked an `f5' push on the 19th move (she played it a turn late), which would have done considerable damage to her rival, she soon gained the decisive edge. On the 25th move, she won a queen-side pawn, and two moves later a centre pawn, after exchanging the queens.

In a minor piece ending that followed, Sandhya had the double bishop advantage as well as the extra pawns. The Chennai girl finally gave up her hopes of a mistake from her rival and resigned after 61 moves, unable to prevent the connected passers on the centre and the outside passer on the king-side.

Playing on the white side of a Petroff Defence, Manasi enjoyed a better position almost from the outset, after Kavitha played carelessly. Black came face to face with a mating threat with Manasi's queen and lightsquared bishop, early in the game, and she made her position worse with wrong moves of defence.

White picked up pawns on the 23rd and 24th moves. An unwarranted centre pawn exchange by Kavitha allowed White to bring her knight into action and she inched closer to a comfortable win. Kavitha gave up on the 38th move after a rook check; she was losing her knight on `f6'.

On the third board, Meenakshi had little trouble in overcoming Kerala's Nimmy A. George, who adopted semi-Slav defence. Meenakshi got a fine `d6' outpost for her knight on the 24th move, after Black unwisely gave her good knight in exchange two moves before. Meenakshi sealed her win with a rook sacrifice on the 31st move. She mated the hapless Black king on the 34th move.

Nimmy's sister Neenu played even worse to squander a promising position in the opening against Prathiba, who played French Defence (exchange variation). The second seed won in 59 moves, by virtue of outside passers.

The results: Manasi Dadarkar (Mah) 3 bt J.E. Kavitha (TN) 2; N. Sandhya (Ker) 3 bt M.R. Sangeetha (TN) 2; S. Meenakshi (TN) 2.5 bt Nimmy A. George (Ker) 1.5; Neenu A. George (Ker) 1.5 lost to Y. Prathiba (TN) 2.5; H. Niranjana Devi (T. Nagar Chess Academy, Chennai) 2.5 bt M. Kasturi (TN) 1.5; Ra. Mahima (TN) 1.5 drew with Nazia Nona (Ker) 2; A. Deepa (Kar) 1 lost to Ashwini Kulkarni (Mah) 2; Pooja Rathod (MP) 2 bt Kashmira Neogi (Kar) 1; T.T. Lakshmipriyaa (Emanuel Chess Academy, Chennai) 2 bt M. Karthika (Lak) 1; Cija Augustus (Ker) 2 bt H. Praja Devi (TN) 1; E. Lakshmi (Kar) 1.5 drew with Aswathi Balagopalan (Ker) 1; Navya J. Thykattil (Ker) 0.5 lost to Anuprita Patil (Mah) 1.5; Thelma Gopal (Ker) 1.5 bt Pooja Rashivadekar (Kar) 1; Sonia Balagopalan (Ker) 1 drew with K. Prajeesha (Ker) 1; Suravi Dutta (Ben) 0 lost to Swati Sengupta (Ben) 1 and Nadia Nona (Ker) 1 bye.

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