Kidambi closes in on IM norm

Kidambi, playing with black pieces, faced an irregular opening from Adam Valerian and exchanged queens quite early to gain parity.

Kidambi then earned a double-bishop advantage and won a pawn in the endgame. He went on to convert the material advantage smoothly into a convincing win. Kidambi moves to 5 points with this win.

IM Sarvanan played a highly original game with the black pieces to outsmart Jaracz Pawel with the `g3′ Kings-Indian defence. The Indian made timely manouevres in the centre to get a space advantage.

Utilising this advantage, he won a pawn in the later middlegame where under time-pressure, Powel blundered his rook on the 40th move to resign immediately.

IM RB Ramesh scored attacking win over IM Burzmann of Germany. Playing the white side of the French Tarrasch variation, Ramesh pushed his `h’ pawn forward early to cramp black on kingside.

Other Results: Sturva Zorab (5.5) lost to Shariyazdanov (6.5), Baginov (5.5) drew with Boris Avrukh (5), Galkin Alexander (6) beat Holzke Frank (5), Keleceric (6) beat Tukmakov (5), RB RAmesh beat Burzmann (4.5), Jaracz Powel (4.5) lost to Saravanan (5.5), Adam Valerian (4) lost to Kidambi (5), Van Mark (4) lost to Konguvel (5), TS Ravi beat Yates Riley (3.5).

Aarthie loses again
MILLFIELD (UK): Aarthie Ramaswami the under-18 women’s World champion, has lost her second match to Hebden Mark in just 33 moves at the British Chess Championship while Koneru Humpy also lost to Gormally Daniel and is on one point at the end of the second round.

It was a positional game which Aarthie could not handle in middlegame. She was forced to open her c-file which provided entry to her opponent’s rook, in the endgame she couldn’t stop his passer pawn from `b’ and `c’ files and resigned on 33rd move.

Fide master Mahesh Chandran, playing with black pieces, applied the Old-Indian defence, though he was troubled by his opponent in the opening and middlegame. But Mahesh obtained an exchange in the endgame and forced his opponent to resign. The Indian has moved to 1.5 points out of two. In the British junior chess championship event, Indian kids continued with excellent performances.