The Hindu : Sport : Aarthie regains winning touch

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Sport

Sport

Aarthie regains winning touch

H.S. Manjunath

LEARNING SESSION: Anupama Gokhale (left), Nisha Mohota (centre) and Mary-Ann Gomes analyse a game. — Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar

BANGALORE: As the 31st National women's `A' chess championship comes to a boil, the pressure is gradually building up on the main contenders and with three rounds to go a cluster finish is very much on the cards.

The equation at the top of the leader board remained the same since overnight leaders Nisha Mohota and Mary-Ann Gomes could only eke out draws and so did Anupama Gokhale in the 10th round action here on Tuesday. Nisha and Mary-Ann have seven points each, while Anupama has 6.5 points.

Swati Ghate and Aarthie R made some ground to be up in the van with six points each. With just one point separating the top five, a needle finish is a distinct possibility.

The day witnessed Aarthie scoring a scintillating win over local girl Kruttika Nadig. Aarthie handled the Ruy Lopez in an aggressive fashion to regain her winning touch.

With her second WIM norm duly formalised, Mary-Ann had to switch her thoughts to consolidate her position at the top and Sangeetha turned out to be a tough one to crack. In a closed Sicilian, Sangeetha remained stoically sound and if she had chosen a more assailing queen sortie on move 16, Mary-Ann would have been under greater stress. But the 15-year-old Mary-Ann put up a stout counter. And when the ending dissolved itself into Queen and Rook variety, neither could strike a winning plan.

In a Queen's Gambit Declined, Shivashankari lost a pawn to middle game complications against Nisha Mohota. But she made up for this with some innovative queen moves, which kept the lid firmly on any Nisha winning design. In fact Shivashankari managed to pile on a fair amount of pressure on Nisha, who warded off many of the threats and the outcome was an inevitable draw.

In a Slav defence, Nimmy George was measuring up to each and every ploy Anupama tried out. In the hurly burly of the middle game, Nimmy even netted a pawn. But when the game reached the final phase, the power of the extra pawn was neutralised in a rook and pawn ending where Anupama had adequate resources to force a draw.

The game between Bhagyashree Thipsay and Swati Ghate ended in a draw, while Priya scored an important point over Raghavi. Swati Mohota's win over Anuprita Patil was another highlight of the day.

The results (10th round): Bhagyashree Thipsay (5.5) drew with Swati Ghate (6); Aarthie R (6) bt Kruttika Nadig (3.5); Priya (5) bt Raghavi (3.5); Anupama Gokhale (6.5) drew with Nimmy A. George (4); Anuprita Patil (4) lost to Swati Mohota (5); P. Shivashankari (2.5) drew with Nisha Mohota (7); M.R. Sangeetha (4.5) drew with Mary-Ann Gomes (7).

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