Defending champion Padmini settles for bronze

Defending champion Padmini Rout contended herself with the bronze medal in the girls’ category of the Asian Junior Chess Championship, which conclued at Chennai today. In the nine-round competition, defending champion Padmini secured 6.5 points to finish third among 53 players in the fray.

Orissa Woman International Master Padmini’s chances of retaining the title proved in vain as she was forced to draws by eventual champion Vo Thik Kim Phung (Vietnam) and Pv Nandhidhaa (India, TN) in the last two rounds. She ended her campaign with five wins, three draws and a defeat against silver medallist Nakhbayeva Guliskhan of Kazakhstan.

Among other two Orissa girls, Aparajita Gochhikar and Sunyasakta Satpathy finished 28th and 31st respectively with 4.5 points each.

In the open category, two out of four boys from Orissa secured positions in top 10 list. Anwesh Upadhyaya and International Master Debashis Das finished sixth and seventh respectively with 6.5 points each. The former ended his campaign on an impressive note, defeating Tamil Nadu IMs K Priyadarshan and Narayanan Srinath in the last two rounds.

Among the other two Orissa players, Swayams Mishra (6 points) and Utkal Ranjan Sahoo (4.5) occupied the 13th and 36th positions respectively. India made a clean sweep of all the three medals with M Shyam Sundar, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (both IMs) and S Nitin (FM) winning gold, silver and bronze respectively with seven points each.
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PHOTO: Padmini Rout at the closing function of the Asian Junior Chess Championship in Chennai on June 23, 2010.

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