Ashwin Jayaram, Mary Ann Win Titles

By Arvind Aaron

Ashwin Jayaram of Chennai and Mary Ann Gomes of Kolkata won theSri Sai Ram Engineering Asian Junior and Asian Junior Girls Chess Championships at Hotel Vijay Park at Koyambedu, Chennai
on Dec 14.

In a grand closing ceremony, Mr Leo Muthu, Chairman, Sri Sai Ram Engineering College, said he would like to give free one acre land within Chennai city pincode to the All India Chess Federation. He also asked Viswanathan Anand to start an academy.

Ashwin Jayaram missed the title last year at Mumbai. He led by half a point and drew the last round last year but Karthikeyan of Chennai pipped him. This time around, the title break was different and he led by a half a point at the end of the penultimate round. But in the final round he played a nice combination and was close to defeating World Under-14 champion Vidit Gujrathi but missed his chance and drew.

This draw allowed, National champion M.R. Lalith Babu of  Vijayawada to play catch up. They tied for the first place on 7.5 points. This time, Ashwin won the tie-break by a wide margin.

Ashwin Jayaram obtained his second GM norm. He had made his  first GM norm at Sort, Spain last year. He will need another norm to complete the title. He had a 10-game and now a nine-game GM norm.

Ashwin Jayaram was previously coached by Manuel Aaron, D.Ganesh, G.B. Prakash. He works on his own now. He is a second PUC Student at Bengaluru but continues to represent Chennai and Tamil Nadu as his grandparents live in Mylapore, in the heart of Chennai.

M.R. Lalith Babu has a number of IM norms but this tied result gave him the IM title in one shot. He played well and also remained undefeated. He recovered from fever prior and could not prepare much for this event.

Second seed Adhiban finished third and easily will do well in the coming years. He is the current World Under-16 champion. He took risk and lost to the eventual champion after refusing to take two perpetuals.

Four players were undefeated. Ashwin Jayaram, Vidit Gujrathi and Lalith Babu were undefeated in boys and Mary Ann Gomes did not lose in girls.

Needing a draw for title, Mary Ann Gomes of Kolkata got the mission completed by offering a draw after 31 moves in a slightly better position against Padmini Rout. That left the race for medals and placings on other boards in the girls  section.

Mary Ann is on a roll. She had won the silver medal for India in the fifth board at Dresden Olympiad recently. She also retains her title. She had won this title at Mumbai in 2007.    She came to play mainly to pick up a seeding for the world junior and completed her mission.

Woman International Master Kruttika Nadig of Pune started as  top seed and finished second with a hard earned win in the final round. She had more tie-break score than Bhakti Kulkarni after they tied on 7/9 each. Bhakti scored an impressive ending win over National Sub-Junior champion

In the colourful prize distribution, World Chess Champion Padma  Vibhushan Viswanathan Anand distributed the prizes. The young chess players also saw their dream player and took autographs and pictures beside the world champion. The 10-day event was excellently organised by the Sports Promotion Foundation, Tamil Nadu State Chess Association on behalf of the AICF at Hotel Vijay Park at Koyambedu, Chennai.