Indian Women Hold France

By Arvind Aaron

Eleventh seed India had good result in women when we drew fifth seed France 2-2 in the ninth round of the Dresden Chess Olympiad on Nov 22.

World Junior girls champion Dronavalli Harika scored the vital win on the top board against GM Sebag Marie while Swati Ghate went down to Sophie Milliet in the fourth board.

All four Indians had lower ratings than the French and a 2-2 results is therefore a very good result. Tania Sachdev drew Skripchenko and Nisha Mohota justified her fielding by holding IM Silvia Collas in the third board.

Harika won two bishops for a rook to win while Tania repeated and took a draw after winning two pieces. Nisha was about to reach a lone bishop versus lone knight of her opponent and they drew. Swati's exchange sacrifice was not enough to hold and she lost.

Indian men lost to America by a disastrous 0.5-3.5 margin. Only Ganguly made sure that we were not wiped out on all four boards by making a draw on board three. He only drew against the Berlin Ruy Lopez.

Kamsky led the American win against India. If you did not know, it was a revenge for their big defeats to us in Istanbul 2000 and Bled 2002. Kamsky put up a good blockade and when Sasikiran took the pawn on f6 with his rook, white slipped into a losing position. Kamsky last played the Manila Olympiad of 1992.

In an irregular opening, Harikrishna was outplayed by Nakamura in a minor piece ending after 44 moves. Akobian choked Gopal for space in the Grunfeld defence and won in 37 squelching moves in the fourth board.

The Chinese strategy of winning one game and drawing the rest is not working. They won one per plan but the Serbs won two others to beat them 2.5-1.5 in the women's section. Higher seeds are not winning in the upper boards of the final rounds and nerves are catching up. In men, Armenia are poised to lose 1.5-2.5 to Israel and Russia is also poised to lose to Ukraine 1.5-2.5.
 

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Home                                                 Published on 23^rd November,  2008