Yerevan (Armenia): Woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev continued her winning ways and defeated Mongolian WGM Mongontuul Bathuyag in a spectacular game to remain in joint lead at the World Junior Girls’ Chess Championship here.
Tania was in her elements in disposing the challenge of Bathuyag, who suffered her second loss on the trot. It was a Benoni opening by Bathuyag as black that left Tania pondering in the early stages for a long time. But as the game progressed, the Delhi-based player continued to have a good grip on the position and finally penetrated through the queen side.
With her queen and rook creating havoc, Bathuyag had no choice but to part with a few pawns and the ensuing rook and pawns endgame proved just two easy. The game lasted 62 moves.
“I thought I was better in the middle game. When I got this rook on the eighth rank, I was confident I would win, but ,by and large, it was amongst my best games here so far,” said Tania after the match.
The victory took Tania to 6.5 points out of a possible 8 and she now shares the lead with Melia Salome of Georgia, who accounted for top-seed Hou Yifan of China. With just 5 rounds to come, it might boil down to a race for gold between these two.
WGM D. Harika played out a fighting draw with Tatev Abrahamyan of United States and is now on 5.5 points. Also on the same score is WGM Eesha Karavade, who had it easy against compatriot Kruttika Nadig in this round.
In the boys’ championship, GM Deepan Chakravarthy went down to Arman Pashikian of Armenia. The Ukrainian GM Yuriy Kryvoruchku is leading the fray with 6.5 points and is closely followed by Levan Pantsulaia of Georgia and Daniel Stellwagen of Holland on 6 points.
Deepan remained on 5 points and now has company of compatriot Abhijit Gupta in this score group. Abhijit had it easy against Wang Li of China.
Amongst other Indian girls, India No. 2 Mary Ann Gomes was quite impressive in her victory over Dana Akateava of Kazakhstan and moved to 5 points while P. Priya and Soumya Swaminathan played out draws with Natalia Buttner of Argentina and Ghazal Hakimifarhad of Iran, respectively. (PTI)
