The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Shalmali jumps into sole lead

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Sunday, Oct 07, 2007
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Sport - Chess

Shalmali jumps into sole lead

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Shalmali Gagare jumped into sole lead at the end of the sixth round in the Canara Bank National sub-junior girls’ chess championship here on Saturday.

Shalmali leads with 5.5 points from six games. She is followed by six players in the joint second place with five points. They are top seed Pon N. Krithikha, M. Khushboo (both TN), Devangi Patankar (Mah), A. Niji (Ker), N. Anusha, K. Sai Nirupama (both AP). Five rounds remain to be played.

Krithikha had some luck for the second day running. Her opponent, Devangi won a pawn and took a draw in the rooks and minor piece ending.

Shalmali made best use of this result to checkmate Pallabi Roy on the 41st turn after winning a bishop to emerge as the first sole leader of this championship.

No clear leader

The boys’ section has just got fiercer with no clear leader after six rounds.

The seven leaders are S.P. Sethuraman, B. Adhiban, S. Nitin (all TN), Fenil Shah (Guj), M.R. Lalith Babu (AP), Abhratanu Dutta (Ben), Aditya Udeshi (Mah). All of them have five points. With five rounds still to go this section is wide open.

Two Tamil Nadu players, both members of the Indian team which won the World Youth Olympiad at Singapore this August played a draw in a major pieces ending. None of the three overnight leaders managed to win. In the game between two Mumbaikars, the higher rated Aditya Udeshi prevailed with the black pieces against joint leader Prasanna Rao using a classical exchange sacrifice to win a pawn up ending in 44 moves. Top seed S.P. Sethuraman of Chennai won easily picking up a rook to defeat Bitan Banerjee.

Lalith Babu of Andhra had a queen and bishop against the opponent’s queen and rook. Stany of Karnataka blundered the rook to gift Lalith Babu a full point and a place in the lead.

One of the best games of the round was played by the National under-11 champion Fenil Shah of Gujarat.

Trained by Manthan Chokshi, Fenil outplayed higher rated Debashis Das in 86 moves for be among the leaders.

Swayams Mishra, of Cuttack, winner of a board prize and gold medal winning Indian Youth Olympic team was defeated by unknown Abhratanu Dutta of Bengal after the former lost two pieces for a rook and was then outplayed. Higher rated players continue to face the heat and the contest is wide open.

The results (round six): Boys: B. Adhiban 5 drew S. Nitin (TN) 5, Prasanna Rao (Mah) 4.5 lost to Aditya Udeshi (Mah) 5, Bitan Banerjee (Ben) 4 lost to S.P. Sethuraman (TN) 5, M.R. Lalith Babu (AP) 5 bt G.A. Stany (Kar) 4, K. Priyadarshan (TN) 4.5 drew with Viani D’Cunha (Kar) 4.5, Fenil Shah (Guj) 5 bt Debashis Das (Ori) 4, Ramnath Bhuvanesh (TN) 4.5 drew with Shyam Sundar (TN) 4.5, Abhratanu Dutta (Ben) 5 bt Swayams Mishra (Ori) 4, N. Srinath (TN) 4 drew with Girish Koushik (Kar) 4.5.

Girls: Devangi Patankar (Mah) 5 drew with Pon N. Krithikha (TN) 5, Shalmali Gagare (Mah) 5.5 bt Pallabi Roy (Ben) 4.5, Y.G.Sriharika (AP) 4 lost to N. Anusha (AP) 5, J. Mohana Priya (TN) 4 lost to A. Niji (Ker) 5, Sai Nirupama (AP) 5 bt Shristi Shetty (Kar) 4, M. Khushboo (TN) 5 bt C.H. Savetha (TN) 3.5, Shaati Majumder (Ben) 4.5 bt P. Sujitha (TN) 3.5.

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