Indian girls shine in World jr. chess

Indian girls made a promising start to their campaign while the boys had mixed fortunes in the opening round of the World Junior chess championships in Athens.

With the exception of Asian junior champion M Kasturi, the rest, including Koneru Humpy, S Meenakshi and Aarthie Ramaswamy, won their boards convincingly.

Woman Grandmaster and men's Grandmaster norm holder, Koneru Humpy, who is seeded fifth, was off to a flying start, outplaying Sanchez Castillo Sarai of Venezuela.

Humpy, a seasoned campaigner on the international circuit, had no trouble in capitalising on a middlegame inaccuracy that netted her a huge positional advantage.

By slow and steady deployment of her forces on both flanks, Humpy gradually improved her position and eventually broke through with simple technique.

Aspiring for her final WGM norm, the former world under-18 champion and International Woman Master Aarthie Ramaswamy too, had it easy against Veronica Breen of Sweden in the first round.

Playing black, Aarthie succeeded amidst the technicalities of the middlegame and squeezed through the defences to obtain a vice-like grip on the game. The rest was child's play for Aarthie.

Local hope Dritsoula Evangelia found the going tough against IWM S Meenakshi, who played with the white pieces. Meenakshi disposed off Evangelia with a perfectly disguised positional stroke that ensured the full point.

M Kasturi went down to IWM Jana Jackova of Czech Republic. Jana started as the favourite in the contest as she is more than 200 points ahead of Kasturi in the Elo rating list. However, Kasturi put up a brave front and it was probably a lack of international exposure that let her down.

In the boys' section, the only Indian to score a full point was P Magesh Chandran, who put it across Sujey Subramanium of Hong Kong in a one-sided game with black pieces.

IM Tejas Bakre drew with Vaingorten Yaqoov of Canada in a hard fought game while K Ratnakaran and M R Venkatesh went down to 11th seed Vajda Levente of Romania and unrated Sebbar Ali respectively.

FIDE Master Richard Palliser of England scored the biggest upset of the day, defeating top seed FIDE Master Ni Hua. The day also also witnessed a few other fancied players being held to draws by lesser known players.