Tania Sachdev

Sort (Spain): National women’s champion Tania Sachdev made her maiden Women Grandmaster norm, beating German International Master Mathias Roeder in a well-crafted game in the final round of the Sort International Open chess meet that concluded here.

Earlier in the ninth round, Ashwin Jayaram also made his maiden GM norm with a hard-earned draw against GM Vladimir Burmakin of Russia.

The event was jointly won by Russian GM Oleg Korneev and Georgian Tamaz Gelashvili, both of whom scored 7.5 points out of a possible 10.

Tania and Ashwin tied for the third spot with seven points each. Soumya Swaminathan also made an International Women Master norm.

Even as she completed her maiden IM norm after beating top seed GM Granda Zuniga of Peru in the ninth round, Tania needed a win in the final game for her WGM norm and she achieved it in style, squeezing out the defensive resources of her higher-ranked opponent.

Tania played white and got to a promising position. Roeder tried hard with some gritty defence, but the German, after his peace treaty was turned down, made a few costly errors.

“It is the best performance of my career and I am very happy,” Tania said after the game. (PTI)