Viji in lead, sister close behind

LUCKNOW: Women Grandmaster S. Vijayalakshmi pulled off a second successive win to continue her strong bid for an unprecedented fifth title in the National women’s A chess championship on Monday. The Indian Airlines player beat Dolan Champa Bose in 48 moves to carve out a slight edge on second-placed younger sister S Meenakshi and Swati Ghate.
Meenakshi, Swati and Bhagyashree Thipsay posted their first wins. Meenakshi beat Saimeera Ravi , Ghate scripted a morale-boosting win over R Aarthie and Thipsay consoled herself to some measures for Sunday’s loss to top seed Viji by getting the better of Maharashtra’s Eesha Karvade.
In other matches in the morning session, Saheli Dhar Barua and Safira Shanaz shared the point and Tania Sachdev held WIM Anupama Gokhale to a draw after 27 moves. Both Anupama and Tania began with Ruy Lopez build up, which entered into an expected exchange of some pieces before the two players struck truce.
Dolan replied with Slav Defence to Viji’s d4 opening. Dolan, in the fourth move, made a mistake of moving Bh5 instead of Nd5 on the 10th move, resulting in the top seed resorting to positional play and began spreading a mating net. Viji had two advanced passed pawns in the rook ending, which decisively pinned Dolan’s king at the back row. In the 48th move, she managed to force her opponent to concede the point to take her tally to two in as many games.
Swati Ghate opted for d4 opening to which Aarthie countered with Queen’s Indian Defence. And after 18 moves, Swati appeared to have consolidated her position. Moving up her ‘h’ file pawn, Swati launched a forceful attack on Aarthie’s king with rook, queen and bishop.
Aarthie could not withstand the pressure and unable to move her locked up rooks, she was forced to exchange one rook for a black bishop. After that Swati did not take very long to collect the full point.
Results (second round): Vijayalakshmi (IA) 2 bt Dolan Champa Bose (Jharkhand) 0.5; S Meenakshi (IA) 1.5 bt Saimeera Ravi (Indian Bank) 1; Swati Ghate (LIC) 1.5 bt Aarthie Ramaswamy (LIC) 0.5; B Thipsay (Maha) 1 bt Eesha Karvade (Maha) 0.5; Saheli Barua (Rlys) 1 drew with Safeera Shanaz (TN) 0.5; Anupama Gokhale 1 drew with Tania Sachdev (Del) 0.5; Dronavalli Harika bye.
Standings: 1. Vijayalakshmi (2); 2-3. Meenakshi, S Ghate (1.5 each); 4-7. B Thipsay, Saimeera Ravi, A Gokhale, Saheli Barua (1 each); 8-13. R Aarthie, T Sachdev, E Karvade, S Shanaz, D Harika, D C Bose (0.5 each).