Humpy, Deep Sengupta keep lead

By Manuel Aaron

OROPESA (SPAIN) OCT. 18 Though held to drawn games, Koneru Humpy and Deep Sengupta continue to lead the World under-14 girls and World under-12 championships at the end of the sixth round of the World Youth Chess Festival on Tuesday night.

Dronavalli Harika was beaten and is now in joint third place in the under-10 girls section. Pentyala Harikrishna is yet to find his form. He was held to a draw and is now joint third in the under-14 boys category.

Dasari Srinivas in the boys under-10 was also beaten. From joint second place he has slid to joint third.

The categories in which the Indians are doing well are the u-14 girls and the u-12 boys. Apart from having clear leaders in these sections we have players in the second and third rungs as well. Eesha Karavade is in joint third place, one point behind Humpy. And in the u-12, Deep Sengupta is followed half a point behind by a three-member group which includes Akshayraj Kore. And a further half a point behind is Abhijeet Gupta who is playing quite well.

Nataliya Hygorenko of Ukraine held Koneru Humpy to a draw in a game lasting over 140 moves and six hours of play. With the white pieces, Humpy played the double fianchetto and held the upperhand throughout. She was always threatening some pawn or the other and appeared to have a winning advantage. When she reached an ending where she had a rook and knight against rook and bishop she had an extra pawn. She slipped in this position and was forced to give up a pawn. Still she tried to win with a better king position. But they reached a position where Humpy had a rook and Hygorenko only a bishop. The Ukraine girl took her king to the right corner and called the arbiter for a draw. After some time the arbiter ruled that the game was drawn.

Deep Sengupta placed his queen on the wrong square in the black side of a French Defence and got into a big mess against Hungary's Laszlo Gonda. The Hungarian missed winning continuations in the face of a stubborn resistance put up by the Indian. Most of the action was on the queen-side, where Deep had planned to castle. Miraculously the Indian's king was safe in the centre for most part of the game. When they reached a queen and pawn ending the position levelled and the players drew in a king and pawn ending.

Akshayraj Kore playing black against Germany's Dieter Lutz was unfazed by the loss of a pawn early in the game. He recovered the pawn in the middle-game to reach a fluid position. He allowed the German to push his c6 pawn towards unstoppable queening and responded with two brilliant moves. The first was a backward bishop move and the second was also a backward rook move that threatened mate in conjunction with his queen. White had to give up his queen for a rook to stop the mate. Kore wrapped up the game on the 39th move.

Abhijeet Gupta kept himself in the top circle with a convincing victory over Hungary's Denes Boros. In the white side of a Sicilian, Boros manoeuvred his king knight around the whole board as a result of which Gupta had completed his development faster.

Gupta had also boldly accepted a backward pawn on the open d-file which Boros was not even able to attack. Gupta gradually built up an attack against white's castled position offering his a7 pawn.

The Hungarian took it and it just gave Gupta the needed momentum for his attack along the h-file. When Gupta massed four pieces on the king-side and sacrificed his knight on h3, the Hungarian resigned.

lRound 6 Indian results: Girls: Nune Darbiniyan (Arm) bt Harika 4.5; V.K.Sindhu 3.5 drew with Sara Afonso (Por); Alexandra Benggawan (Can) lost to Iswarya Shobana 3.5; Kruttika Nadig 3.5 drew with Annet Hoffmann (Ger); K.Humpy 5.5 drew with Nataliya Hygorenko (Ukr); Maria Kursova (Rus) drew with Eesha Karavade 4.5; Catherine Lip (Aus) bt Tania Sachdev 3; Nabeela Farheen 2 drew with Karmen Mar (Slov); Marany Meyer (S.A) drew with Shraddha Samani 4; Fabian Leonie (Austria) bt J.E.Kavitha 2; David Howell (Eng) bt Dasari Sai Srinivas 4; David Benidze (Geo) drew with M.Abhinav 3.5; Laszlo Gonda (Hun) drew with Deep Sengupta 5.5; Denes Boros (Hun) lost to Abhijeet Gupta 4.5; Dieter Lutz (Ger) lost to Akshayraj Kore 5; P.Harikrishna 4.5 drew with Oleksandr Aryeschenko (Ukr); Saptarshi Roy 3 lost to Alejandro Tello (Spa); Himanshu Kumar 1.5 lost to Manuel Carrasco (Spa); Yashpal Sonwani 3 bt Harold Dougan (Spa); Tom Weber (Lux) lost to P.Mageshchandran 3.

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