EESHA FINISHES FIFTH IN WORLD JUNIOR CHESS

Indiatimes, India
Oct 16 2006

YEREVAN (ARMENIA), Oct 16: Woman Grandmaster Eesha Karavade finished
fifth after drawing her final game with Mongontuul Bathuyag of
Mongolia in the 13th and final round of the World Junior Girls’
chess championship that concluded.

WGM Shen Yang of China won the gold after coming out with a brilliant
performance against WGM D Harika in the final game. It turned out
to be a four-way tie at the top between Shen Yang, her compatriot
Hou Yifan, Bathuyag and Melia Salome of Georgia who all scored an
identical 9 points from 13 games played here.

The tiebreaker confirmed Shen Yang’s victory as she had played the
best opposition here. The silver went to Yifan while Salome won the
bronze medal for her efforts. Despite leading in the first half and
the only one here to beat Shen Yang and hou Yifan, Bathuyag had to
be content with the fourth place.

Eesha ended on 8.5 points for the fifth spot where she had company
of compatriot Mary Ann Gomes, Atousa Pourkashiyan of Iran Anna Rudolf
of Hungary. Amongst the 8.5 pointers Mary was most impressive in the
final round cruising past Diana Arutyunova of Ukraine.

Out of seven in the fray, four Indian girls found themselves in the
top ten bracket with Harika and WGM Tania Sachdev finishing 9th and
10th respectively. Soumya Swaminathan and Kruttika Nadig ended their
stint on 7 points while P Priya finsihed on 6 points.

In the open section that concluded simultaneously, International
Master Zaven Andriasian of Armenia annexed the title after taking a
draw with Grandmaster levan Pantsulaia of Georgia.

The Armenian scored 9.5 points in all and remained half a point adrift
of nearest contenders Pantsulaia, Nikita Vitiugov of Russia and Yuriy
Kryvoruchko of Ukriane.

After the ties were resolved, Vitiugov got the silver while Kryvoruchko
won the bronze. It turned out to be another mediocre performance for
the Indian boys as Grandmaster Deepan Chakravarthy was held to a draw
by Sergei Matsenko of Russia, birthday boy Abhijeet Gupta signed
peace with Le Quang Liem of Vietnam and Rahul Sangma achieved the
same result in quick time against Daan Brandenburg of Holland.

GM norm holder Deep Sengupta ended on the losing side against Li
Chao of China. Amongst four Indians in the fray here both Abhijeet
and Deepan ended on 7 points while the remaining two were a half
point behind.

Despite trying hard, Eesha could not squeeze out the defensive
resources of Bathuyag who played white. Opting for the Sicilian
Nazdorf Eesha was up against the English attack and it was a tense
battle right from the word go.

When the middle game surfaced Bathuyag declared her peaceful intentions
by going for the repetition but Eesha relentlessly tried even at the
cost of getting a worse position.

However, in the endgame the pawns got traded at regular intervals and
the draw was agreed to after 49 moves. Harika was the other Indian in
with a chance to win the medal but she could not match the guile of
Shen Yang who played a finely crafted game in the Slav Chelyabinsk
variation. "I just played badly today and it was a one sided game",
said Harika who was unbeaten till the final day.