National U-18 chess: Bharath, Soham share lead

Bharath Subramaniyam and Soham Kamotra register wins in the fifth round and share the lead after five rounds of the National U-18 chess tournament.

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE: Bhagyashree Patil and Keerti Shree Reddy lead in the girls' section.

H. Bharath Subramaniyam (TN) and Soham Kamotra (J&K) share the lead with five points apiece in the open section after the fifth round of the MPL 31st National Under-18 chess tournament at the Dr. MCET campus here on Wednesday.

In the top board, Bharath cashed in on a pawn push mistake by Mahendra Teja of Andhra Pradesh on the 22nd move and used a lethal knight outpost immediately. It won him an exchange on the 26th move and the game in 37 moves.

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Soham won against Krishnan Ritvik of Maharashtra in a rook ending and extra pawn from 67 moves.

In the girls’ section, second seed Bhagyashree Patil (Maharashtra) got the better of Anupam Sreekumar (Kerala) in 55 moves from the black pieces. She joined Keerti Sree Reddy of the host State who won against Ishvi Aggarwal (Haryana).

• Bharath Subramaniyam TN) 5 bt Mahendra Teja (AP) 4;
• Soham Kamotra (J&K) 5 bt Krishnan Ritvik (Mah) 4;
• Dinesh Kumar Jaganathan (TN) 3.5 lost to L.R. Srihari (TN) 4.5;
• Avinash Ramesh (TN) 4.5 bt Manish Anto Cristiano 3.5;
• Ayussh Ravikumar (TN) 3 lost to John Veny Akkarakaran (Ker) 4.5.

• Anupam M. Sreekumar (Ker) 4 lost to Bhagyashree Patil (Mah) 5;
• Ishvi Aggarwal (Har) 3.5 lost to Keerti Shree Reddy (TN) 5;
• Khairmode Dhanashree (Mah) 3.5 lost to S. Kanishka (TN) 4.5;
• L. Jyothsna (TN) 3.5 drew with Azal Nasir (Del).