The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Soumya Swaminathan moves ahead

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Sunday, Aug 27, 2006

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Sport - Chess

Soumya Swaminathan moves ahead

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Defending champion Soumya Swaminathan scored her first victory over Saheli Nath to emerge the sole leader with a perfect score after five rounds in the girls' section of the Parsvnath National junior chess championship at the Bapu Samaj Sewa Kendra here on Saturday.

In the open section, Woman Grandmaster D. Harika joined four others in the lead after scoring over B. Adhiban, one of the three overnight leaders.

Other players with 4.5 points are favourite Abhijeet Gupta, G. Rohit, G.N. Gopal and Soumitra Majumdar.

Soumya smashed the psychological barrier against Saheli to whom she had lost a couple of times. Playing black, the Pune-girl hit hard in the middle game of the Sicilian game. Soumya offered a central pawn that Saheli accepted only to regret.

Soon Soumya reached a position where she could have either captured a piece or traded a rook for a minor piece. Eventually, Saheli lost a piece and resigned. The result made Soumya the only one among the 201 players to have scored five straight victories.

Nadig joint second

Second seed and former champion Kruttika Nadig moved within half-a-point of Soumya by beating Supriya Maji, the reigning National `B' women's champion. Seven players follow at four points.

The results (fifth round): Open: Abhijeet Gupta (4.5) drew with G. Rohit (4.5); D. Harika (4.5) bt B. Adhiban (4); G.N. Gopal (4.5) bt R. Premnath (3.5); Soumitra Majumdar (4.5) bt Shyam Nikhil (3.5); Rahul Sangma (3.5) drew with Joydeep Dutta (3.5); S.P. Sethuraman (4) bt P. Karthikeyan (3); Anwesh Upadhayaya (3) lost to R. Sidharth (4); Kranti Kumar (3) lost to Akshat Khamparia (4); Swapnil Dhopade (3) lost to R. Ashwath (4); Aswin Jayaram (4) bt Vedprakash Sinha (3); Ibrahim Dusthageer (3) lost to T. Purshothaman (4); Vipul Subhashi (3.5) drew with Swayams Mishra (3.5); Gurpreet Pal Singh (3.5) drew with Fenil Shah (3.5); Bitan Banerjee (3) lost to S. Nitin (4); Avi Bagdi (4) bt Trailokya Nanda (3); Sandeep Singh (3) lost to V. Haribalu (4); Rahul Ved (3) lost to Vinay Raj Bhatt (4).

Girls: Saheli Nath (4) lost to Soumya Swaminathan (5); Supriya Maji (4) lost to Kruttika Nadig (4.5); R. Preethi (4) drew with Padmini Rout (4); Mary Ann Gomes (4) bt Mohana Priya (3); P.K. Jayashree (3.5) drew with Kiran Mohanty (3.5); Aswathy Balagopalan (3.5) drew with M. Rajadarshini (3.5); Lakshmi Sahiti (3.5) drew with Devengi Patankar (3.5); Mohana Sengupta (3) lost to Mahima Rajmohan (4); P. Uthra (4) bt Minki Sinha (3); P. Priya (2.5) lost to K. Nayana (3.5); P. Sivasankari (3.5) bt Amrita Sinha (2.5); Preetika Tayal (2.5) lost to Chandana Priya Reddy (3.5); Tejaswini Reddy (3.5) bt Priyanka Ved (2.5); K. Tejaswi (3.5) bt Anuja Bobatkar (2.5); J. Sahari (3) drew with Sukanya Dutta (3).

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