By IANS,
New Delhi : Top seed and International Master Tania Sachdev’s dream of qualifying for the Chess World Cup came to an end as she lost her sixth and final game against Bangladeshi national champion Sultana Sharmin Shirin in the Asian Zone 3.2 Chess Championship here at AAI Club here Friday.
Cruising for victory and qualification for the World Cup against a rival rated 400 points below her, Tania blundered in the 36th move and immediately resigned. This crucial result made the championship wide open in the ladies section as national champion Kruttika Nadig and Women Grandmaster Nisha Mohota along with Sultana are now fighting for the single berth available in the World Cup.
Nisha and Tania now lead the table with four points each but Tania had completed her all matches. Kruttika with 3.5 points takes on Nisha in the final round while Sultana have the identical score and paired with Sachini Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka in the final round encounter.
Meanwhile in the men’s section, International Master K.Rathnakaran beat overnight sole leader Grandmaster Neelotpal Das in the eighth round encounter while veteran Grandmaster Praveen Thipsay and International Master Sriram Jha easily overcome Kesav Malla of Bhutan and Hapuarachchi HLM of Sri Lanka with out much struggle.
Playing white side of Sicilian Defence, Rathnakaran overcome his fancied rival in just 30 moves.
This result helped Thipsay and Jha with 6.5 points to take the joint lead in this 13 round robin championship.
In other eighth round matches, second seed Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy defeated Surbir Lama of Nepal while top seed Ziaur Rahman beat Ahmed Ashraf of Maldives. Bangladeshi Grandmaster Reefat Bin-Sattar had better against Amir Karim of Pakistan.
Results :-
Men (Round 8): Amir Karim of Pakistan (2) lost to GM Reefat Bin-Sattar of Bangladesh (3); IM Sriram Jha (6.5) beat Hapuarachchi HLM of Sri Lanka (1); Ahmed Ashraf of Maldives (1) lost to GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh (5.5); Surbir Lama of Nepal (2.5) lost to GM Deepan Chakkravarthy (6); IM K Rathnakaran (5.5) beat GM Neelotpal Das
(6); Kesav Mall of Bhutan (0) lost to GM Praveen Thipsay (6.5); Tunveer Gillani of Pakistan (2.5) got bye
Women (Round 6): WGM Nisha Mohota (4) beat Monalisa Khamboo of Nepal (0); WGM Swathi Ghate (2) beat Sachini Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka (1); Sultana Sharmin Shirin of Bangladesh (3.5) beat IM Tania Sachdev (4); Kruttika Nadig (3.5) got bye