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Priyanka Kumari |
Priyanka Kumari Wins Title
By Arvind Aaron Press Officer
- AICF
Priyanka Kumari of Jharkhand won the National Under-11
Girls Championship with a round to spare when she crushed Soumya
Shrivatsav of Maharashtra easily with the black pieces in the tenth round
on Nov 10.
Priyanka moved to nine points from ten games and leads
the girls section by 1.5 points. The three Tamil Nadu players who are
behind her on 7.5 points can only play for the silver and bronze medals as
there is only one round still to be played. This list includes N.Srinidhi,
Catherina Michelle and J.Vaishnavi.
Priyanka is from Chakradharpur, in Jharkhand, the same place as Deep Sen
Gupta, the former world under-12 champion. She is a student of Amit Kumar
Medda and IM Neeraj Kumar Mishra. It is known that she was
qualified to go to Georgia but did not do so for want of resources. Her
victory should bring in the required sponsors from Jharkhand to pay for
her trips in the coming years. She is the first Jharkhand girl to win
any national chess title.
The boys section is excitingly poised with Sahaj Grover of Delhi and Fenil
Shah of Ahmedabad in joint lead with 8.5 points from ten games. In the
joint third place are G.V.Sai Krishna, Y.V.K.Chakravarthy (both AP), Vian
D'Cunha (Kar) and Shiven Khosla (Mah) with eight points. All of them have
chances for the title. Sahaj has the highest tie-break score and a victory
in the final round will give him the title.
In Friday's games at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Sahaj Grover
rebounded to defeat Shardul Gagare of Maharashtra in style by sacrificing
his queen.
Fenil Shah created space for himself by expanding his central pawns and
then trapped the knight of Ajay Srikanth (Chennai) for a place in the
lead.
Vian D'Cunha of Mangalore kept a small advantage all along but Sai Krishna
held him to a draw in a king and pawn ending after a long rook ending. It
is perhaps the closest and well fought National Under-11
championship ever.
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Published on : 11.11.2006
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