Erigaisi Arjun, Jishitha Win Under-13 Titles

Erigaisi Arjun, Jishitha Win Under-13 Titles
By Arvind aaron

Top seed Erigaisi Arjun of Telangana and second seed D Jishitha of Andhra won the National Under-13 Chess Championships that concluded at Ahmedabad on July 30, 2016.

Erigaisi Arjun scored nine wins and drew two games to win the title by a wide one point margin. Sixth seed Koustav Chatterjee of West Bengal took the second place after he was beaten in the penultimate round by Sreeshwan Maralakshikari (AP). Koustav finished one point below Erigaisi Arjun for clear second place.

Seed 36 Anuj Shrivatri of Madhya Pradesh took the third place with 8.5 points. He started with two wins and finished strongly with three wins to be gaining 141.60 rating from this event. Madhya Pradesh taking one of the six (three in Open, three in girls) podium slots also ensured no state dominated this contest and could not win a second podium place.

In the girls group, top seed Saina Salonika was on 7/8 and Jishintha was behind on 6.5. The ninth round defeat of Saina to Jishitha determined the title as both players won their remaining games. Second seed Jishitha remained undefeated and won the title with 9.5/11. She was held to draws by Manya Bagla (Del), Vysetty Sahithi (Tel) and L Jyothsna (TN). L Jyotsna (TN) did well for third place despite the lone defeat to team-mate C Lakshmi.

International Arbiter S Paul Arokia Raj of Chennai was the chief arbiter and deputy chief arbiters were IA Madhav Vitthal and IA Indubhai Parmar. The venue was Rajpath CLub (Golden Hall) in Ahmedabad. The tournament director was Bhavesh Patel and it was organised by the Gujarat State Chess Association.

The top finishers will represent India in the Under-14 categories of Asian Youth and World Youth Chess Championships at Montevideo, Uruguay from Sep 16-26, 2017.

Final placings:

Open: 1 Erigaisi Arjun (Tel) 10/11; 2 Koustav Chatterjee (WB) 9; 3 Anuj Shrivatri (MP) 8.5; 4-10. G.B. Harshavardhan (TN), Aronyak Ghosh (WB), Sreeshwan Maralakshikari (Tel), Benjamin Varghees Issac (Ker), B.J.S.K. Ranadheer (AP), Aditya Basu (WB), Sankalp Gupta (Mah) 8 each…170 players.

Girls: 1 D Jishitha (AP) 9.5/11; 2 Saina Salonika (Odi) 9; 3 L Jyothsna (TN) 8.5; 4-5. C Lakshmi (TN), Madabishi Abhirami (AP) 8 each; 6-8. Dhyana Patel (Guj), Garima Gaurav (Bih), Mrudul Dehankar (Mah) 7.5 each; 9-15. Shilpee Madhani (Guj), B.M. Akshaya (AP), M.K. Poorna Sri (TN), M Sai Divya (AP), Riddhi Upase (Mah), Bristy Mukherjee (WB), Bhagyashree Patil (Mah) 7 each…81 players.