Aarthie loses yet again

In the boy’s section, IM’s P Harikrishna and Tejas Bakre sustained their stay at the top when they agreed to an early draw in their battle with 5.5 points each.

Trailing behind the leading duo in joint third place with 5 points a piece were Iran’s Ghaem Maghami, Sunderrajan Kidambi, Surya Sekhar Ganguly (both IMs) and S Satyapragyan.

In the game of Caro-Kann Defence, classical variation between Aarthie and Humpy. The former (white pieces) played a bad 14th move, `e4′. She had to give away a pawn on the 20th move and was forced to make 15 moves in only three minutes.

She got a pawn back on the 26th move but lost two more on the 28th and 29th before losing the clash on the 35th.

In the game between Yu Ting and Elena, the former forced her Uzbek rival to play `Nh8′ on the 28th move and gained an advantage.

The Chinese girl took control of the open E file and doubled the rooks on the 30th move. Two moves later Yu sacrificed a pawn to weaken her rival’s position further, regained the loss three moves later and then forced Elena to resign on the 42nd move.

In the boy’s section, the top board game of French Defence Vinavar Variation between Harikrishna and Bakre, petered out into a drawn affair with neither willing to take any risks and concede any point advantage to the other in their seventh round clash.

On the 2nd board in the game between Maghami and Kidambi of Caro-Kann Defence Panov-Botvinnik Variation, the rivals followed an old game which had been played out by former World champion Anatoly Karpov and Gata Kamasky till the 14th move

The scenario changed from the 15th move when the Iranian surprisingly played h4, a novelty, and got a slight advantage over his Indian opponent.

After exchange of queens on the 29th move Maghami had isolated double pawns on G file. Both players played badly under time pressure thereafter to end up with one minor piece and equal number of pawns apiece before agreeing to a draw on the 41st move.

Results (round VII):

Boys:

Tejas Bakre (5.5 pts) drew P Harikrishna (5.5), S Kidambi (5) drew Ghaeem Maghami (5), SS Ganguly (5) bt CJ Arvind (4), S Satyapragyan (5) bt Said Rakhimbakov (4), Al Sayed Mohammed (5) bt Fillipov Anton (3.5), Du Shan (4) drew Enamul Hossain (3.5), Valay Parikh (4) bt Mark Paragua (3), Syed Zohaib Hassan (3.5) drew Neelotpal Das (3.5), John Paul Gomez (4) bt Mathew Sonter (3), Mahesh Chandran (4) bt Annaberdiev Meillis (2.5), Soumyaranjan Mishra (3) drew V Kamble (3), Prathmesh Mokal (3.5) bt Taher Mullajuma (2.5), Arjun Tiwari (2.5) bt Akshya Kore (2), Himanshu Kumar (2) drew PMAB Athukorala (1.5).

Girls: Yu Ting (6) bt Elena Levushkina (3.5), Koneru Humpy (5.5) bt Aarthi Ramaswamy (4), Swathi Ghate (4.5) bt S Meenakshi (4.5), Nisha Mohta (4.5) bt Tania Sachdev (3), Chauthi Ngoo Giao (4) bt Beverly Mendoza (3), Pazh Sivakame (2.5) bt Madina Duisenova (2.5), Y Pratibha (3) bt Anupama Konara (2), JE Kavitha (3) bt Feroza Haque Chowdary (0.5).