Michelle Holds Arjun Tiwari

By Arvind Aaron

Tamil Nadu's 12-year old Michelle Catherina held former champion Arjun Tiwari to a fighting draw in the opening round of the St Joseph's College of Engineering National Youth Under-25 Chess Championship at St Joseph's College of Engineering in south Chennai on December 16.

Michelle had two rooks and they were doubled on the seventh rank. Arjun Tiwari who is the 2006 winner of this event from Maharashtra perpetually checked the girl's king with his queen to draw in 52 moves.

The Rs.60,000 prize money tournament will be held over nine rounds. It is organised by the Mount Chess Academy for the Kanchi District Chess Association. The college is on the Old Mahamallapuram Road and is half an hour drive from Adyar in south Chennai.

Seventy one entries for the National Under-25 is a good number, observed organiser V. Ravichandran of the Mount Chess Academy.

The top seeds had a comfortable time. First seed Laxman picked up a rook with a backward tactic using the backrank weakness to win while Deep Sengupta arrested his opponent's king with his rook and queen. Prathamesh Mokal and P. Karthikeyan, the other two IMs also posted wins.

The event attracted 52 FIDE rated players of which four are IMs and 14 were women. FIDE Master S. Nitin of Salem won a level rook ending against Bala Kannamma. Another mild upset was V. Haribalu's defeat. Eight rounds remain to be played.

AICF's official site www.indianchessfed.org  has made arrangements for live coverage of the top boards and the results can be checked on www.chess-results.com

Dr Babu Manoharan, Director, St Joseph's College of Engineering inaugurated the tournament in the presence of TNSCA President P.R. Venketrama Raja. D.V. Sundar, Honorary Secretary of the AICF participated in the opening ceremony.