Jyothsna, Saina and Priyanka share second spot

World Youth Chess Championship 2018

Report by Puneet Jaiswal

Overnight joint-leaders Jyothsna, Saina and Priyanka have slipped to the second spot in their respective categories as they managed only a draw in the fourth round of the World Youth Chess Championship 2018 being played at Porto Carras, Greece.

In the under-14 girls category Jyothsna L, playing black pieces against the German’s Ziegenfuss Antonia, failed to find any headway in the Slav defence exchange variation after obtaining easy equality and had to settle for a draw in the endgame arise due to simplification in the two minor pieces each endgame in 44 moves.

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Jyothsna L. with five other players are trailing behind by the two Chinese girls to remain on the second spot.

WIM Mridul Dehankar and WIM Divya Deshmukh bounced back after their defeat in round three with a win over Behzad Nazif Parva of Iran and WCM Ehsani Yassamin of USA respectively.

In the Under-16 girls’ category, WFM Saina Salonika survived in an inferior endgame resulting out of the Kings Indian Defence with black pieces against Beydullayeva Govhar of Belarus.

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In the under-18 girls’ category, K Priyanka drew against WFM Rozman Monika of Slovenia with white pieces in the Najdorf variation of Sicilian defence. On move 14 Priyanka decided to sacrifice an exchange to obtain connected passed pawn on the queenside which proved insufficient as black used her active major pieces and returned the exchange to transpose with an extra pawn in the major pieces endgame further Priyanka used her passed a-pawn to obtain counter play and forced her opponent to reach in the drawn Queen pawn ending with 3 vs 2 pawns on the same side.

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In the boys under-14 open category, CM Kushagra Mohan drew against FM Murzin Volodar whereas Ritwik Raja and Srihari L R won their respective games. In the boys under-16 open category Sankalp Gupta lost on the top board against IM Sargsyan Shant of Armenia.

Result Round – 4

Under-14 Open

7	7	FM	Murzin Volodar	2340	2½	½ – ½	2½	CM	Kushagra Mohan	2283	26
12	3	IM	Raja Rithvik R	2421	2	1 – 0	2		Risteski Emil	2120	48
28	67		Abelakiotis Stavros	1994	2	0 – 1	2	AGM	Srihari L R	2170	40

Under-14 Girls

3	25		Ziegenfuss Antonia	1969	3	½ – ½	3	WCM	Jyothsna L	2060	11
5	16	WFM	Dhyana Patel	2002	2½	0 – 1	2½	WFM	Caglar Sila	2184	3
9	4	WIM	Divya Deshmukh	2180	2	1 – 0	2	WCM	Ehsani Yassamin	1875	35
15	20	WCM	Mrudul Dehankar	1996	2	1 – 0	2		Behzad Nazif Parva	1859	37

Under-16 Open

1	5	IM	Sargsyan Shant	2463	3	1 – 0	3		Sankalp Gupta	2352	28
19	49	FM	Loiacono Leonardo	2277	2	1 – 0	2		Koustav Chatterjee	2344	30
45	73		Vatsal Singhania	2128	1	1 – 0	1	CM	Hernandez Luna Jose Angel	1913	97
54	110		Garvit Kumar Kalra	1620	½	1 – 0	½		Rios Campos Pablo Antonio	1454	116

Under-16 Girls

2	4	WFM	Beydullayeva Govhar	2202	3	½ – ½	3	WFM	Salonika Saina	2093	21
5	15	WFM	Cervantes Landeiro Thalia	2129	2½	1 – 0	2½	WFM	Makhija Aashna	2197	5
14	40		Sanskriti Goyal	1971	2	½ – ½	2	WFM	Grigorieva Yulia	2112	18
17	44		Shanya Mishra	1924	2	½ – ½	2	WFM	Rudzinska Michalina	2073	23
19	26		Meenal Gupta	2065	2	1 – 0	2		Kalyva Kyriaki	1779	61
33	52		Tejasvi M	1869	1	1 – 0	1		Ge Eva	1701	69
43	86		Sagar Siya	1310	0	1 – 0	0		Langvik Ulrikke	1715	68

Under-18 Open

23	59			Alexakis Dimitris	2186	1½	0 – 1	1½	FM	Mitrabha Guha	2352		30
43	83			Manu David Suthandram R	1970	1	1 – 0	½		Pobor Danilo	1934		84

Under-18 Girls

1	12	WIM	Chitlange Sakshi	2237	3	0 – 1	3	WIM	Shuvalova Polina	2421	1
3	14		Priyanka K	2207	3	½ – ½	2½	WFM	Rozman Monika	2141	21
10	30	WFM	Tarini Goyal	2026	2	1 – 0	2	WIM	Martynkova Olena	2188	15
13	20	WFM	Arpita Mukherjee	2147	2	½ – ½	2		Prakapuk Vera	1949	41
14	22	WIM	Tejaswini Sagar	2139	2	1 – 0	2		Cibikova Sofia Anna	1809	65