The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Aarthie on top, Mary-Ann falters

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 29, 2005

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Sport - Chess

Aarthie on top, Mary-Ann falters

H.S. Manjunath

BANGALORE: Getting into a strong position is one thing. Wrenching a win out of it is quite another. Mary-Ann Gomes did the first part admirably well, but faltered in the second, allowing R. Aarthie to wriggle out of a tight spot in the fifth round of the National Women's `A' chess championship here on Thursday. This great escape helped Aarthie reach the top of the leaderboard with four points from five rounds, half a point ahead of Anupama Gokhale, whose win over Shivashankari was easily the game of the round.

Midway through this irregular set up, Aarthie had as many as five of her pieces languishing in the back rank even as Mary-Ann worked herself into a commanding position with some kind of a "bind" in the centre to sustain pressure. Aarthie was not only "cramped" but also had a couple of weaknesses to worry about. But for someone who had conducted the opening phase so vigorously, Mary-Ann made a shocking error of judgment when going in for an illogical pawn thrust on the queen side when much of her energies till then had been directed against a hopelessly bottled up Aarthie's king's side. The result proved disastrous for Mary-Ann as Aarthie was almost instantly "liberated". The Aarthie pieces which till then were "choking" began to breathe more freely with the result that the world under-18 champion had found a route to recovery and pushed Mary-Ann to defeat.

Drawn encounter

Nisha Mohota and Swathi Ghate took turns to call the shots. Nisha had a glorious chance to finish the game when a more enterprising "pin" with her queen of a dangling Swathi rook would have yielded better results. Instead, she opted for slight material gain. Then it was Swathi's turn to put pressure on Nisha. Both survived some anxious moments and decided in the end to share the point.

The results (fifth round): Anuprita Patil (2) bt Bhagyashree Thipsay (2), P. Shivashankari (1) lost to Anupama Gokhale (3.5), M.R. Sangeetha (3) lost to Priya (3), Mary-Ann Gomes (3) lost to R. Aarthie (4), Nisha Mohota (3) drew with Swathi Ghate (2.5), Swati Mohota (2.5) drew with Kruttika Nadig (2.5), Nimmy George (1.5) drew with Raghavi (1.5).

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