Boys shine, girls struggle in U-11 National Chess

Orissa continued to enjoy respect in the 23rd National Under-11 Chess Championship with boys and girls putting up impressive performance in turn. Today, boys did well for the state with five wins and one defeat in the eighth round of the national meet at Shivamogga (Karnataka). Second seed Sidhanth Mohapatra (6.5), the highest ranked among them, returned to joint second position with win over B Kumaran of Tamil Nadu. But Orissa girls experienced a bad day as overnight joint leader and top seed Sunyasakta Satpathy (6) slipped to joint third place, suffering defeat at the hands of sole leader Ivana Maria Furtado (Goa). Three more Orissa girls also went down, while three others posted wins in the eight round. Orissa results (8th round): Girls: Sunyasakta Satpathy (6) lost to Ivana Maria Furtado (Goa), Akankhya Kabi (5.5) lost to Gk Monnisha (TN), Smaraki Mohanty (5) bt S Manasa (TN), Sribrinda Rout (5) bt HR Manasa (Kar), Adyasha Pattnaik (4) lost to TC Meghana (Kar), Pooja Senapati (3.5) lost to M Oviyanila (TN), Subhashree Priyadarshini (2.5) bt H Tejaswani (AP). Boys: Sidhant Mohapatra (6.5) bt B Kumaran (TN), Rakesh Kumar Jena (6) bt Shivam Chandak (Guj), Chinmay Routray (5.5) bt Jeet Jain (Guj), Bhaskar Sri Viswaroopanand (5) bt Anirudh V Bhat (Goa), Soumen Amlan (4) lost to Pavit Singh (Del), Mohit Sahoo (4) bt U Abishek (TN).