Bhakti Kulkarni Regains Title
By Arvind Aaron
 

Bhakti Kulkarni of Goa scored over Mitali Patil of Maharashtra to win the National Junior Girls title for  the second time. Her round ten win took her to 9.5 points from ten games in the Stree Seva Mandir Diamond Jubilee National Junior Girls Chess Championship at the Nehru Stadium on Sep 27.

"This title is more valuable than the previous one," said Bhakti on winning her penultimate round which  gave her the title with a round to spare. In the final round, Bhakti faces Sub-Junior champion R. Bharathi of Chennai. Bharathi is three points below Bhakti and it is Swiss pairing! Bhakti had won the National Junior title in 2007 at Nagpur.

Top seed Padmini Rout and C.H. Savetha are in the second and third place with eight points each. They will fight it out for the second place on Monday morning.

Anwesh, Swapnil In Lead

In the boys section, unheralded Anwesh Upadhyaya of Orissa and Swapnil Dhopade of Amravati,  Maharashtra won against defending champion Lalith Babu and leader Sethuraman to move into joint lead. In the final round, Anwesh faces Swapnil and the winner will be the new National Junior champion.

They both have eight points. However, if they draw, others can win and tie-break will be used.

Five players are on 7,5 points and they share the third place and have title chances. S.P. Sethuraman,  Arun Karthik, N. Srinath, Ramnath Bhuvanesh and Shyam Sundar. So, top seed B. Adhiban, second seed Lalith Babu, third seed Ashwin Jayaram and fourth seed P. Karthikeyan have lost the chance to win this  tournament.

Arun Karthik and Shyam Sundar are undefeated so far but there are no rewards for not losing a game

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