Seven Boys, Three Girls Ahead

By Arvind Aaron

No clear leader has emerged from the first four rounds of the Sri Sai Ram Engineering Asian Junior Chess Championship being played at the Vijay Park hotel in Koyambedu, Chennai on December 9. The nine round Swiss format event is organised by the Sports Promotion Foundation and the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association.

The three leaders in boys figured in drawn encounters as four others won and extended the leader board to seven players. World Under-16 champion B. Ashiban, World Under-14 champion Vidit Gujrathi, Rahul Sangma, M.R. Lalith Babu, Vishnu Prasanna, Shyam Sundar and Ashwin Jayaram are leading with 3.5/4. Five rounds remain to be played.

Defending champion P. Karthikeyan and top seed S.P. Sethuraman are in the next points group with three points. None of the overseas players made it to the top and it is an India dominated event.

Unable to win with white is a signal of poor preparation. Mary Ann Gomes who won a silver medal at Dresden on the fifth board is struggling with the white pieces. She had drawn an earlier white game also after being in the brink of losing and was lucky to save half point by holding leader Shalmali Gagare to a draw in round four.

Shalmali who missed a win was joined by Kruttika Nadig and Bhakti Kulkarni in the lead with 3.5 points. Kruttika, the top seed from Pune sacrificed a rook for bishop and defeated medical student N. Raghavi of Chennai.

Woman FIDE Master Bhakti Kulkarni of Goa overcame WIM Padmini Rout in a surprising result of the round. Bhakti played like Padmini and used the two bishops well to dominate and win the ending against two knights.

Winners will receive IM titles and GM norms. Importantly, they will receive it from the hands of world champion Viswanathan Anand.