The top seed IM Dronavalli Harika of Airport Authority of India, AP proved her supremacy by winning the 36th National Women Premier Chess Championship which has concluded here today at the St.Joseph’s College of Engineering. Harika has been trailing behind Meenakshi till the 9th round but the last round was interestingly poised with both going for the title and Harika having the better Tiebreak score.
From the English opening on the top board Meenakshi of Air India maintained slight advantage in the opening, but not enough to score over. Her opponent WGM Mary Ann Gomes , former Asian Junior Champion attacked the weakness on c4 square. Meenakshi went for king side attack despite her own king side defense proved to be quite insufficient. Meenakshi overlooked a tactics in the resulting in an inevitable mate and take the runner up positon with 8 pts.
WGM Aarthie chose the closed Guioco Piano against Harika on the 2nd board. Aarthie sacrificed a knight on the 22nd move when Harika held some initiative . Aarthie had some compensation in pawns and conducted the middle game well with Harika’s king being insecure. But when things were heating up the players drew the game seeing the top board results which ensured Harika’s title with 8 ½ pts .
WGM Eesha Karavade had a quick draw against Priya in 19 moves to move on to 7 pts and confirm her qualification . Meanwhile IM Tania came better against WGM Nisha from the black side of the Nimzo Indian defense in 43 moves. On the 6th board WIM elect Bhakti Kulkarni beat Amrutha Mokal to stay in contention with qualification berth for future exposure trips thro the Federation.
The last game of the tournament to finish was between WIM Kiran Monisha Mohanty of Orissa and World Junior Champion Soumya Swaminathan. The fight was immense with either player having chances to get into top 6. Soumya had to part with her Queen for two rooks in the middle game but had a strong “B” pawn roll. A Knight move by Soumya on the 47th move turned out to be a mistake which ended up in a weaker coordination and lead to loss of a rook . Kiran won the game in 52 moves and in the process completed her WGM Norm. Kiran is an Engineering student from the KIIT’s College of Bhubaneswar and her earlier norm was made in 2007 National Women A in Pune.
Dr.P.Mannar Jawahar,Vice-Chancellor,Anna University distributed the prizes to the winners in the presence of Dr.B.Babu Manoharan,Director,St.Joseph’s College of Engineering,WGM S.Vijayalakshmi and Shri DV Sundar,Secretary,All India Chess Federation
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