Top seeds Megna and Ivana maintaine their lead

Panaji, Nov 16 (UNI) Top seeds C H Megna (Kerala) Ivana Furtado (Goa) and S Bhargavi (Tamilandu) continued their winning spree, claiming three points each at the end of the third round of the on going National Under- 7 Chess Championship for boys and girls in Goa.

C H Meghahna( 3) beat Chadreyee Hazare( 2) of West Bengal, Ivana Furtoda( 3)of Goa, Forum Thakkar( 2) of Gujarat and S Bhargavi( 3) of Tamil Nadu surprised Tejaswini Sagar (20) of Maharastra.

While in the girls events, Kaustuv Kundu( 2.5) of West Bengal drew with Sai Akshay ( 2.5) of Andra Pradesh on top board, while Abhimanayu Puranik of Maharastra, Saurav Mohanty of Orissa, R U Anantram of Karnataka, Saradhara Preet of Gujarat, Pivit Singh of Delhi, Shivram Srivastav with three points each too continued their winning form.

In all, 14 boys and seven girls were leading with three points each at the end of the third round today.

Meghna played the black side of Guico Piano opening and got an equal game. She won a pawn on the 21st move and the rest was a matter of techinique for her. Forum Thakkar played passively against Ivana's queen pawn opening and lost a piece on the 10th move.

The game ended on the 30th move. Others leading included Santoji Devi M(AP), C R Varsha(TN), Akhila S (AP), N Shreya Chakraborty( WB).

In a minor upset in the boys section, Kaustav Kundu played out a marathon seventy move draw against top seed Sai Akshay. Rochy Kumar tried the advanced variation against the French defense of Abhimanyu Puranik but lost control of the important centre squares early in the middle game.

He lost an exchange on the 19th move and resigned after 32 moves.

Rishabh Naik (2) of Goa blundered a piece against Anantram and resigned on 19th move.

Goan girls had a mixed day today, Saili Parulekar (1) and Sakshi Praabhu (1) scored their first points, Riya Sawant (2), Reema Naik (1), Vidula Dempo (1) lost their games while Nadia Dias (1.5) drew her game with R Sribinda (1.5) Orissa.

Among Goan boys, Snehil Shetty( 2) lost to Jeron Ebenazor( 3) of Tamilnadu, Sukukh Pinge (2) drew his game with Ayush (2) of UP, Aniruddha Bhat (2) win Navjot Singh (1) of Punjab, Saish Mahale (2) beat Aman Raitya (1), Pranav Mahatme(2) beat Anirudha (1) of Karnataka and Saish Bandodkar (2) beat Salim Raja (1) of Assam.

However, Girish Kulkarni, Mathan Lad, Ashish Rebelo and David Velho, all one point, lost their games.

UNI SRN SD SY RAI2234