Meenakshi beats Tania to emerge as sole leader

Chennai: Meenakshi Subbaraman shot into the sole lead with 4.5 points following her fluent win over Tania Sachdev of Delhi in the fifth round of the 36th National Women Premier Chess Championship here on Sunday. Top seed Dronavalli Harika, who was in the joint lead with Meenakshi yesterday, is in the second place with four points after she was held to a draw by Kiran Monisha Mohanty of Orissa. Mary Ann Gomes (West Bengal), Kiran Monisha Mohanty (TN), P Priya (TN) and Bhakti Kulkarni (Goa) are in the third place with 3.5 points apiece. Meenakshi (IA), playing White, chose a Maroczy bind set up. She then sacrificed a pawn on the 15th move to remove an important bishop that was defending the black king. Tania probably overestimated her chances by grabbing the pawn.Meenakshi was swift to open up the position to launch a powerful attack against the weakened black king. To repel the attack, Tania was forced to sacrifice an exchange on her 33rd move. Meenakshi then converted her material advantage smoothly to gain a valuable point in 43 moves, thereby, brightening her chances of a maiden crown.The top table game between Kiran and Harika saw an Italian opening being employed by the former with white pieces. Kiran’s tacit draw offer by repeating moves was refused by Harika when she preferred to exchange Queens. Though Harika had an extra pawn in a Knight versus Bishop ending, she could not make any headway as Kiran defended the position very well and finally the players agreed to a draw in 81 moves. On the third table, Bhakti Kulkarni scored an upset win over World Junior Girls Champion Soumya Swaminathan of Maharashtra. In an irregular Queen pawn opening, Soumya, playing black, erred on her 20th move with a central pawn move. The young Bhakti was quite sharp to note a neat tactical point that forced Sowmya to give up her queen for a rook and bishop. Bhakti then controlled the position very well to score an important point in 39 moves. Esha Karvade and Kruttika Nadig drew their game in 29 moves. Mary Ann Gomes scored over Saimeera Ravi of Indian Bank in 65 moves while Priya defeated Pon N Krithika. PTI