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Riya Savant goes into sole lead

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Riya Savant of Goa wrested sole lead after six rounds in the R.M.K. Residential School National under-9 chess championship at the Nehru Stadium here on Thursday.

Riya became the only player to win all six games and leads the girls’ section. R. Vaishali of Tamil Nadu and the National under-7 champion Khushi Dharewa of Bengal are behind her on 5.5 points.

Top-seeded Bansi Prathima (AP) and others are tied for the fourth place on five points.

Four on top

Four players, M. Sabhareesh (TN), Y. Grahesh (AP), Puranik Abhimanyu (Mah) and Mitrabha Guha (Ben) jointly lead the boys’ section with 5.5 points each. Sabhareesh won the centre pawn but could not hold on to it as Bhaskar Gupta played the Panov-Botvinnik attack against the Caro-Kann. Gupta, however, regained it to draw a 49-move pawn ending.

This result allowed three other players to join Sabhareesh in the lead.

Puranik trained by International Master Jayant Gokhale of Pune played a nice combination to defeat Adarsh of Uttar Pradesh.

Mitrabha Guha lost a pawn but counterattacked and pushed his queen rook pawn to score over Harsha (AP).

Grahesh opened with the English opening and sacrificed a knight for two pawns and hunted down the black king of Jay Shah (Guj) in 27 moves.

Important results (round six):

Boys: Bhaskar Gupta (Mah) 5 drew with M. Sabhareesh (TN) 5.5; Puranik Abhimanyu (Mah) 5.5 bt Adarsh Shrivastava (UP) 4.5; Harsha Bharathakoti (AP) 4.5 lost to Mitrabha Guha (Ben) 5.5; Y. Grahesh (AP) 5.5 bt Jay Shah (Mah) 4.5; Jeet Jain (Guj) 4 lost to V.S. Rathanvel (TN) 5.

Girls: Riya Savant (Goa) 6 bt Tejaswini Sagar (Mah) 4.5; V. Toshali (AP) 4.5 lost to Khushi Dharewa (WB) 5.5; R. Vaishali (TN) 5.5 bt Sonali Jena (Ori) 4; Bansi Prathima (AP) 5 bt C.M. Sunyuktha (TN) 4; Anjali Manoj (Ker) 5 bt Sweta Senapaty (Ori) 4; K. Rakshana (TN) 5 bt Vidula Dempo (Goa) 4.

Round five: Boys: Y. Grahesh drew with Bhaskar Gupta; Jay Shah drew with B. Harsha; M. Sabhareesh bt V.S. Rathanvel; Rudraksh Parida lost to Puranik Abhimanyu.

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