Thirty-three Indians Among Leaders

By Arvind Aaron

After two rounds in the World Youth Chess Championship at Al-Ain in the United Arab Emirates, 33 Indians of the 86 competing are enjoying joint lead on December 19, 2013. Nine rounds remain to be played in this event that runs from December 17-29. Our leaders include 14 boys and 19 girls.

In the Boys or Open Under-8 section, four Indians are in the lead with full two points and it includes Praggnanandhaa, Mahindru Ruhaan, Manthan Datta and Mahitosh Dey.

In the Open Under-10 section, National Under-9 champion Nihal Sarin and Aronyak Ghosh are among the leaders with two full points. In this same section, our title hope and second seed L.N. Ram Aravind drew and is on 1.5 points.

In the Open Under-12 section, three Indians, K.S. Raghunandan, also the Asian champion, is leading with full score. Two other leaders from India include Saurabh Anand and Rakesh Kumar Jena.

Two players, Muthaiah Alagappan and N.R. Visakh are among the leaders on full score in the Open Under-14 section. Our title hope and second seed V.R. Aravindh Chithambaram is on 1.5 points.

In the Open Under-16 section, Sayantan Das, Girish Koushik and Jagadeesan Gireman are on full score while Karthikeyan Murali is on 1.5 points.

Asia’s weakest section is the Boys Under-18 section. After two rounds, 18 players are in the lead and it does not include a single Asian. Grand Master Vaibhav Suri suffered a defeat and Prathik Patil is on 1.5 points.

Girls Sections

Four Indians are among the leaders in the Girls Under-8 section with full two points. Our champion Divya Deshmukh of Nagpur is the third seed. She had accounted for a Russian and Ukrainian opponent in the first two games. Other three leaders from India include Bhagyashree Patil, Aditi Mohanty and Gunjal Chopdekar.

A similar four players are leading in the Under-10 section as well. C Lakshmi, Saina Salonika, Krystal Fernandes and Manya Bagla are leading with two maximum points,

In the girls under-12 section also, four Indians are among the leaders. It includes two last year’s champions, R Vaishali and N Priyanka. Other two are Tarini Goyal and Bidhar Ruttumbara Kumari.

India is doing well in girls and has four players among the leaders in most sections. In the Under-14 we have Rutuja Bakshi, Kavya Anigani, Ananya Suresh and Tejaswini Sagar on full score of two points.

Last year’s Under-14 champion M Mahalakshmi is among the leaders in the Girls Under-16 section with two full points. The other Indian along with her is Parnali Dharia.

In the Girls Under-18 section, Bodda Pratyusha is among the leaders on full two points. Here, J Saranya and Michelle Catherina are on 1.5 points.

Hosts, United Arab Emirates has the second largest number of players after Russia. Entries of some important chess nations at Al-Ain: Russia 110, UAE 94, USA 94, India 82, China 54, Sri Lanka 40, Iran 38.

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