Another setback for Swati

KOZHIKODE, FEBRUARY 14: Swati Ghate continued her horrible run in the National Junior Girls Chess Championship here on Monday. The top see...

KOZHIKODE, FEBRUARY 14: Swati Ghate continued her horrible run in the National Junior Girls Chess Championship here on Monday. The top seed, with memories of her 15th place finish in the last edition at Thalassery behind her, played with fire for the third time in four rounds and fell to Kerala’s Sasinas Haritha to virtually go out of the race for title. Though four more rounds remain to be played, Swati would find it difficult to neutralise the two-point deficit between her and the leader.

The lead passed safely and solely into the hands of Meenakshi Subburaman of Capa Academy, who logged four points from four games. The youngesr sister of national champion Vijayalakshmi wasted no time to make this, her last year in the National junior, a memorable one as she planned a calculated assault against her citymate CV Rajalakshmi of Chrompet in an irregular opening.

With white, Rajalakshmi would have liked to handle the English Opening. But Meenakshi decided that she wanted to put the `book’ out for at leastthis game and waded into uncharted territory. “I wanted to play my own opening,” she explained later. The Chrompet girl was all at sea as she erred on her seventh move, which gave equality to black, and later with three or four dubious moves handed the advantage also. By move 20, Meenu won an exchange and as is the pattern in the junior competition now, the gain became a full rook, seven moves later.

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Haritha and Swati met in the Scheveningen variation of Sicilian Defence. The Kerala girl, who had seen some of this variation with her room-mate Nisha Mohota from the ECO (Encyclopaedia), was in unclear waters in early middle game and lost precious time. In time pressure, she lost a pawn and seemed to have lost her way. But Swati’s greed dealt a heavy blow for her as she went for a piece capture on move 40 and quickly landed in a mating net with the Queen and knight.

Nisha and Haritha shared the second position with 3.5 points each. Pazha Sivakami of TN played a reckless Queen-move in Slav Defence againstNisha before completing development and was in danger after 15 moves. By move 19, Nisha had done enough to control the game with the pair of bishops. By move 28, she won a piece.

Topboard results

CV Rajalakshmi (Chrompet) 3 lost to S Meenakshi (Capa) 4; Nisha Mohota (WB) 3.5 bt Pazha Sivakami (TN) 3; Sasinas Haritha (Kerala) 3.5 bt Swati Ghate (LIC) 2; Baisakhi Das (WB) 2.5 drew with Monalisa Malakar (WB) 2.5; MR Sangeetha (TN) 3 bt J Megha (Kar) 2; Nilavoli (Capa) 2 lost to JE Kavitha (AICF) 3; Nazia Nona (Kerala) 3 bt Madhuri Patil (Mah) 2; Anoori Shah (Guj) 2 drew with Eesha Karvade (Mah) 2; Madhonna Fullmoon (TN) 1.5 lost to Anudradha Beniwal (Har) 2.5; Lakshmi Priya (TN) 1.5 lost to Prajeesha (Kerala) 2.5; Manjula James (Kerala) 1.5 drew with M Kasturi (TN) 1.5 Thelma Gopal (Kerala) 1.5 drew with Niranjini (T Nagar) 1.5; Srivani (AP) 1 lost to Rucha Karvade (Mah) 2.

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