AP's Reddy leads in boys, Meghana

Panaji, Nov 19 (UNI) Revanth Reddy (7.5) of Andhra Pradesh became the sole leader among the boys section, at the end of the eigth round, while in the girls section. C H Meghana of Kerala and Madhumita M (AP) with 7 points each were joint leaders in the National Under-7 boys and girls championship here.

In the boys section on the first board, Sai Akshay (6.5) of AP tried the Bird's opening against Revanth Reddy (7.5) but lost an exchange in the middle game. Revanth never lost the initiative after that and pocketed the point. Grajesh Y( 7) of AP had an easy time after Bidhyananda S (6) of Manipur blundered a rook in the end game.

Yeshwant N S (6.5) of AP played well from the white side of Nimzo Indian Defence against Aritra Dalui (5.5) of West Bengal while Harshal Sai (5.5) of Delhi lost to Saradhara Preet (6.5) of Gujarat.

In the girls section, C H Meghana from Kerala pounced on some opening mistakes of C R varsha(6) of Tamil Nadu who tamely carved in after 21 moves. On the second board P Preety (6) of Pondichery had a slight edge from a Queen Gambit decline opening. However, she made some mistakes in the rook end game against Madhumita of AP and lost.

Sarojini Devi (6) and Tejaswini P both from AP played out 85 move draw while Ivana Furtado (6) from Goa easily beat pattniak Adyasha( 5) of Orissa. In the minor upset third Rutuja Baakshi (5) of Maharastra lost to Shreya Chakraborty (6) of West Bengal and Sneha N( 5) lost to Ahikla S(6) of AP.

Among the Goan girls, Reema naik (4) beat Kavana Prabhu (3), The youngest goan Vidula Dempo (3) beat Bidisha Sarma after playing for almost 4 hours. Ramya A D (2) beat Santhya S (1) of TN. However Riya Sawant( 3), Sakshi Prabhu (3) and Gauri Hadkonkar (2.5)lost their games.

Among goan boys, Snehil Shetty (6) scored an impressive victory over Aryan Singh (5) of Haryana, Anirudha Bhat (5) was smart enough to claim a draw by three fold repitition of moves when only 2 minutes were left. Tatvesh Sawant (5) beat Ankit Tripathy (4) of Orissa.

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