Indians In Second Spot At Yerevan
By Arvind Aaron

The World Junior Chess Championship is happening at Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a former Soviet Republic.

After six rounds, the news is that an Asian and African are in joint lead with five points out of six! They are So Wesley of the Philippines and Adly Ahmed of Egypt.

Top seed GM Wang Hao of China is tied for the third place on 4.5 points. Two Indians, G.N.Gopal (seed 16) of Aluva, our newest Grand Master and Ashwin Jayaram (seed 27) of Chennai are tied for the third place on 4.5 points.

A total of 79 boys are in the fray. It includes other Indians as well: Abhijeet Gupta (seed 28), Parimarjan Negi (seed 18) on 4 each, J.Deepan Chakkaravarthy (seed 22) 3.5, G.Rohit (seed 24) 3, Abhishek Das (seed 45) 2.5, Arun Karthik (seed 41) 2.

The World Junior is always a 13 round Swiss format event. Anand won in 1987, Humpy in 2002 and Harikrishna in 2004. This event runs from October 2-17.

In the girls section, World Under-18 girls champion and top seed Dronavalli Harika is on five points from six rounds and is tied for the second to fourth places. WIM Vera Nebolsina is leading with 6/6.

In this 58-player event, five other Indians are in the fray besides Harika. Tied for the fifth place on four points are Padmini Rout, Soumya Swaminathan, Eesha Karavade.

Points and seed numbers of the other Indians: 19-24 P.Priya (seed 27), Mary Ann Gomes (seed 12) 3.5 each,