OROPESA DEL MOR (SPAIN), NOV 6: With steely determination behind her mild manners, Aarthie Ramaswamy overcame many a higher rated player to give India this millennium's last World crown of the chequered game.Aarthie held her nerves in the final round against Wangyu, the 1998 girls' under-16 World champion, before beating the Chinese in a Ruy Lopez game for the under-18 title.The win brought cheer to the Indian chess fraternity in an year that saw leading light Viswanathan anand, a two-time winner of the chess Oscar, go without a title win after six victories last year.Anand's decision to skip the Las Vegas World Championships, won by Alezander Khalifman in the absence of the peerless Gary Kasparov and defending champion Anatoly Karpov besides the Indian, proved to be an ill-fated move.Anand's proposed rival World title match against Kasparov never took off for lack of sponsorship and the Indian lost another chance to prove his credentials.The only other notable success for India came from Nationalchampion Krishnan Sasikiran, who won the Asian Junior title at Vung Tau City (Vietnam) in September.Sundararajan Kidambi fumbled at the World Junior Chess Championship in Yerevan (Armenia) and so did National women's champion S Vijayalakshmi. But Aarthie's title triumph yesterday in the Spanish city of Castellon is sure to lift up the Indians' spirits going into the next millennium. On the final day, Aarthie scored a facile win to keep top-seeded Russian Evgenija Ovod at bay after the penultimate round had created suspense in the girls under-18 field.Aarthie, who overcame the odds in the initial rounds and defeated stronger players including Evgenija, was stunned in the 10th round by sixth seed Jana Jackova of the Czech Republic.She was in danger of losing her lead after the defeat, but the Russian drew her game in the same round and both the aspirants went into the final round with eight points each.
