Girls fare better than boys
Report by Mr.R.Anantharam

In the Asian Youth Chess Championship held at Tehran, Iran, Indian girl players have fared better than their counterparts so far. Of the 6 categories in the girls section, five categories have either sole or joint Indian leaders, whereas in the boys section, only two groups have Indian leaders at the end of the fourth round. Five more rounds remain to be played.

P. Uthra halted the winning spree of the local girl Jafari Golnaz to emerge sole leader with 3.5 points in the senior most category for girls – u18. Preethi recorded her first win of the championship to raise her tally to 2.5, along with K. Manasa. Irrespective of the draw with Khademelsharieh Sarasdat of Iran, Rathore Sonakshi is alone at the top with 3.5 points in the U12 category for girls. Four players, including Pratyusha Bodda and P.V. Nandhidhaa are on second position with 3 points each. WIM padmini Rout regained her touch to beat WFM Hakimfard Ghazal of Iran to lead jointly with J. Mohana Priya, Nguen Thi Mai Hung of Vietnam and Qurbonboyeva Sarvinoz ofUzbekistan.

In the U16 category for girls, Pon N Krithika continued to lead with Hoang Thi Nhu of Vietnam, as they drew the game between them. Bhakthi Kulkarni is on 3 points. M. Mahalakshmi missed some winning advantages to settle for a draw against the wonder kid Ivana maria Furtado and the duo still lead the U10 field with 3.5 points each. Only the U8 group among girls have no Indian leader, as Savant Riya (3) was forced to share the point with Abdulmalik Zhansaya of Kazakstan (3.5). The latter is leading, along with Al Mansouri Mousa of UAE.

Mahapatra Sidant maintained a slender half a point lead with 3.5 points by drawing the game with Diptayan Ghosh. C.H. Mohineesh has climbed to the second spot, together with Ghosh and two others. Ankit R. Rajpara had to surrender his lead due to the loss to Vidit Santosh Gujrati, who shares the lead with Prasanna Rao and Golubev Roman of Uzbekistan with 3.5 points. The most anticipated tussle between S.P. Sethuraman and the FM Salem A.R. Saleh from UAE , in the U16 group petered out into a tame draw, enabling the latter to keep the lead with 3.5 points. Sethu, Shyam Sundar, B. Adhiban, S. Nitin and Ilhomzadeh Ikrom of Tajikistan follow the leader with 3 points each.

In the u12 section, the hitherto joint leaders Shiven Khosla and Sayantan Das lost their games to Javanbhakt Nima of Iran and Girish A Koushik respectively. Nima has won all the four games, a feat also achieved by Nigem Ortik of Uzbekistan in the u8 boys category. Ortik defeated Y. Grahesh on the top board. Though Debashish Das held Toufiji Homayoon of Iran to a draw in the U18 category, he trails Homayoon by half point, together with P. Saravana Krishnan and two others.


Home                                                            Published on 19^th July, 2008