Velpula Saraya stretches lead in Girls and Four share lead in Open

33rd VMRDA National Under 13 Open and Girls – 2019, Visakhapatnam

Report by IA S.PAUL AROKIA RAJ, Chief Arbiter

The ongoing 33rd National Under 13 Open Chess Championship in the port city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh witnessed turn of events in the eighth round. This has resulted in four players emerging as the joint leaders with 7 points each. The joint leaders are FM Jubin Jimmy (Kerala), M.Pranesh, V.Pranav and Nikhil Magizhnan (all from Tamil Nadu).

Six others with 6.5 points are close on the heels of the leaders. At the same time in the girls category, the top seed Velpula Sarayu (Telangana) now with 7.5 points stretched her lead by one point when she asserted her supremacy over her opponent in the top table. Two others namely Kriti Mayur Patel (Maharashtra) and Kheerthi Ganta (Telangana) are on the second spot with 6.5 points each. With only three more rounds to go a virtual battle line is drawn to pick up the champion.

In an interesting battle between the top two seeds V. Pranav and M.Pranesh (both from Tamil Nadu), the former with white pieces opted for exchange variation of Ruy Lopez opening. Trouble started for Pranav when black stunned his king with a Queen check on his 23rd move. The continuous onslaught by black shook white’s citadel resulting in loss of two pawns and the game. FIDE Master Jimmy bounced back to victory when he registered an emphatic win over S. Harshad (Tamil Nadu) in a long drawn battle of 67 moves in a b3 opening. Nikhil Magizhnan employed two knight’s defense with black pieces to overpower Jain Adi (Gujarat) to join the elite group of leaders.

In a clash on the top table, Velpula Sarayu outmaneuvered Mayur Patel with white pieces in London system She scuttled the effort of black to castle and safeguard her king by going all out attack against the centralized king of black. At one stage when Velpula promoted her ‘a’ pawn to Queen and dragged a mating net Mayur Patel tendered her resignation on her 42nd move.

Open

Round 8

Bo.	No.		Name	Rtg	Club/City	Pts.	Result	Pts.		Name	Rtg	Club/City	No.
1	2		Pranav V	2315	TN	7	0 – 1	6	FM	Pranesh M	2333	TN	1
2	7		Harshad S	1917	TN	6	0 – 1	6	FM	Jubin Jimmy	2214	KER	3
3	4	CM	Nikhil Magizhnan	2175	TN	6	1 – 0	6		Jain Adi	1593	GUJ	32
4	12		Aditya Varun Gampa	1826	TEL	6	½ – ½	6		Manish Kumar (2006)	1953	Orissa	6
5	34		Koustuv Dash	1591	Orissa	6	½ – ½	6		Aaditya Dhingra	1867	HAR	11
6	8		Shah Jeet	1905	MAH	5½	0 – 1	5½		Ilamparthi A R	2074	TN	5
7	24		Krishnan Ritvik	1685	MAH	5½	1 – 0	5		Chilukuri Sai Varshith	1888	AP	9
8	10		Shreyash Shuvam Patnaik	1868	Orissa	5	½ – ½	5		Md Imran	1622	AP	29
9	44		Shounak Mazumder	1545	WB	5	½ – ½	5		Aditya Bikram Paul	1807	WB	13
10	14		Arhan Chethan Anand	1791	KAR	5	– – +	5		Prithvvi Singh	1593	UP	33

Girls

Round 9

Bo.	No.		Name	Rtg	Club/City	Pts.	Result	Pts.		Name	Rtg	Club/City	No.
1	11		Kheerthi Ganta	1545	TEL	6½	½ – ½	7½		Velpula Sarayu	1768	TEL	1
2	17	WCM	Kriti Mayur Patel	1449	MAH	6½	½ – ½	6		Meenatchi Rajam V	1714	TN	2
3	24		Tejaswini G	1374	TN	6	1 – 0	6		Boramanikar Tanisha S	1694	MAH	3
4	4	WCM	Wankhade Sanskruti	1630	MAH	6	½ – ½	6		Yashavishree N	1422	TN	20
5	6	AIM	Renganayaki V	1610	KAR	6	1 – 0	6		Cera Dagaria	1433	MP	19
6	13		Yash Jyoti Bir	1507	WB	6	½ – ½	6		Swara Lakshmi S Nair	1390	KAR	21
7	16		Anushka Gupta	1456	WB	6	0 – 1	6		Panda Miracle	1379	Orissa	23
8	18		Rout Yashita	1440	Orissa	6	0 – 1	6		Barik Bijayalaxmi	1344	Orissa	31
9	5		Akshaya Rajaraman	1617	TN	5½	1 – 0	5½		Sri Anjana Sarvani M	1146	AP	71
10	35		Prasiddhi Bhat	1316	KAR	5½	½ – ½	5½	WCM	Patel Riddhi R	1461	GUJ	15