SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, April 14: Four players of Jharkhand, including a female participant Saara Jain registered facile victory in the 9th round of MPL 34th national under-12 boys and girls’ chess championship being played at Mandya district of Karnataka.
Secretary of Jharkhand State Chess Association (JSCA) Neeraj Mishra (former International Master) giving this information from Mandya said that among the Jharkhand participants, state under-12 champion Debanjan Sinha has so far earned 5.5 points with five wins and a draw. The other three players Souryadipta Sarkar, Adhiraj Mitra and Abhiraj Dey have 5 points each to their credit.
Saara Jain has 5 points in her kitty. “All of them will have to win the last two rounds to improve their ranking in the final rankings,” he said.
However, on other boards top seed Shubhi Gupta of Uttar Pradesh scored the fifth win to recover her 4th round loss to emerge as the leader of the Girls section with 8 points to her credit after the end of the ninth round of the championship.
In the open group, Goutham Krishna H of Kerala defeated overnight leader Arena IM Vaz Ethan of Goa, his first defeat, to join him as a joint leader in the title race. Both have 8 points each and are ahead by a point from a group of 13 players. Both Vaz and Goutham are floating down to 7 points giving a chance to the trailing group of thirteen to pull down the leaders and increase their chances to win the Championship.
