Date:10/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/10/stories/2008121061351900.htm

Sport - Chess

Seven players in joint lead

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Seven players — Adhiban, M. Shyam Sundar, Vishnu Prasanna, Ashwin Jayaram (all Chennai), Rahul Sangma (Del), Vidit Gujrathi (Mah) and Lalith Babu (AP)— shared the lead after the fourth round of the Sri Sai Ram Engineering Asian Junior Chess Championship here on Tuesday.

Bhakti Kulkarni of Goa overcame World under-14 girls’ champion Padmini Rout of Orissa. Bhakti joined Shalmali Gagare and Kruttika Nadig in the lead with 3.5 points from four rounds.

Tied for the fourth place on three points are defending champion Mary Ann Gomes, Divyasri, Meenu Rajendran, Shristi Shetty.

Leader Shalmali let defending champion Mary Ann Gomes escape with a 79-move draw in a rook ending after having winning material in her side.

Raghavi tasted her first defeat, losing to the experienced Kruttika Nadig in 32 moves.

Bhakti checkmated Padmini Rout on the 59th move with black pieces and used the pair of bishops to dominate the knights and win in style.

The winner will be awarded the International Master title and along with that a nine-game Grand Master norm.

Important results (fourth round):

Boys: M.R. Lalith Babu 3.5 drew with B. Adhiban 3.5; P. Karthikeyan 3 drew with Ashwin Jayaram 3.5; M. Shyam Sundar 3.5 bt T. Purushothaman 2.5; Rahul Sangma 3.5 bt K. Priyadarshan 2.5; Vidit Gujrathi 3.5 bt G.A. Stany 2.5; Pranav Shetty 2.5 lost to Vishnu Prasanna 3.5; P. Saravanakrishnan 2 lost to S.P. Sethuraman 3; Sagar Shah 2 lost to S. Nitin 3; Anwesh Upadhyaya 3 bt Minhazuddin Ahmed (Ban) 2; Shyam Nikhil 3 bt V.A.V. Rajesh 2; Debashis Das 3 bt J.S. Daklia 2; T. Abhay 2 lost to M.G. Gahan 3; Tejas Ravichandran 3 bt Navin Kanna 2.

Girls: Mary Ann Gomes 3 drew with Shalmali Gagare 3.5; N. Raghavi 2.5 lost to Kruttika Nadig 3.5; Padmini Rout 2.5 lost to Bhakti Kulkarni 3.5; Ch Divyasri 3 drew with Kiran Mohanty 2.5; R. Preethi 2 lost to Meenu Rajendran 3; P. Uthra 2 lost to Shristi Shetty 3; Supeshala Thilakawardana (Sri) 2 lost to P. Sivasankari 2.5; A. Soumya 1.5 lost to J. Mohana Priya 2.5; Supriya Joshi 1.5 lost to R. Bharathi 2.5; S. Harini 1.5 lost to Michelle Catherina 2.5.