Seeded player advances in Nationals

Chennai, Nov 6 (UNI) Last year's World U-10 Champion Sahaj Grover (Delhi) and eight other boys collected four points in as many rounds to advance to the next level of the Sri Ramachandra Medical College-Ramco Group-CPCL 20th National Under-11 Chess Championship for Boys&Girls here today.

In the girls division, three players J Sahari (AP), Priyanka Kumari (Jharkand) and P Sujitha (TN) with four points each surfaced as the joint leaders.

The reigning World Under-10 Chess Champion Girish Kaushik of Karnataka, who lost to Madurai boy S S Manikandan in the earlier third round lost the fourth round too to Eshwanth Dev Kumar, a player hailing from Nagercoil, a far away place but close to the tip of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu. Garish made a dubious pawn sacrifice inviting Deskman to create a passed ''c'' pawn stream rolling into a queen. On the 71st Girish was checkmated.

On the other hand, previous World Champion Under-10 category Sahaj Grover, gave no room for complaint in all the four games played so far.

Among the girls trying their wits on the top three tables, only P Sujitha was able to score over B Pratyusha Of Andhra Pradesh and whereas the remaining two Tamil Nadu girls R Dharanisree and V Janu went down to L Priyanka Kumari (Jharkand) and J Sahari (AP) respectively.

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