Sasinas shares lead with Nisha Mohota

Sasinas shares lead with Nisha Mohota
UNITED NEWS OF INDIA

KOZHIKODE, FEBRUARY 15: Tenth seed Sasinas alias Haritha of Kerala shared the lead with Nisha Mohota of West Bengal with a convincing victory over overnight leader S Meenakshi at the end of the fifth round of the 14th National Junior Chess Championship on Tuesday.

On the top board, Sasinas, with black pieces, launched a virulent attack from the 27th move of Nimzo Indian defence against the central territory of Meenakshi by sacrificing a pair of bishops for an active rook and a pawn. This later helped her to proceed to tear open white's pawn centre resulting in the formation of a vital B passer on move 32. She won a bishop in the 38th move out of a tactical calculation which forced Meenakshi to resign in the next turn.

Fifth seed CV Rajalekshmi of Tamil Nadu did well against the second seed Nisha Mohota till the 32nd move of Slav Defence. In the next move, she put her A pawn prone to be captured eyeing on the C pawn of the rival in return on move 42. Nisha put the rook behind her A passer and startedpushing it to A8 for queening. After waging a losing battle for some more time, Rajalakshmi conceded the point.

Sangeetha subdued her team-mate J Ekavitha (AICF) in the 87th move of a marathon race. Both squandered winning chances by turns and arrived at an even position on move 80 involving one rook and four pawns on both sides.

But a thoughtless move of Kavitha with her rook to the semi open B file afterwards bestowed a passer on Sangeetha at D7 which clinched the issue in her favour.

In other interesting games, Pazha Sivakami of Tamil Nadu outwitted Nazia Nona of Kerala in the 27th move of French Defence Tarasch Variation while Monalisa Malakar (WB) held Anuradha Beniwal (Hariyana) to a draw in the 41st move of Sicilian Defence.

Results

S Meenakshi (4) lost to Sasinas Haritha (4.5), Nisha Mohota (4.5) bt CV Rajalekshmi (3), JE Kavitha (3) lost to MR Sangeetha (4), Pazha Sivakami (4) bt Nazia Nona (3), Monalisa Malakar (3) drew Anuradha Beniwal (3), Prajeesh K (3) drew Basakhi Das (3),Swathi Ghate (3) bt Rucha Karawade (2), Eesha Karawade (3) bt Iswarya Sobhana (2), E Lakshmi (2) lost to H Nilavoli (3), J Megha (3) bt Anoori Shah (2).