National Under 13 Championships, Vellore
Former Double World Under 8 Girls Champion Ivana Maria Furtado and former Goa State Champion Anurag Mhamal did Goa proud by finishing in the prize list of the National Under 13 Chess Championships which concluded at the Vellore Institute of Technology at Vellore today.
In the Girls Section, Ivana finished 13th with a tally of 7.5 points. More importantly she finished ahead of arch rival M. Mahalakshmi of Tamil Nadu who had won the Asian Under 10 Girls Championship earlier this year. Dempo Brand Ambassador Ivana also finished ahead of former World Champion Cholleti Sahajasri of Andhra Pradesh and considering that this category is two age groups higher than her usual category (Under 9) this has to be considered as a tremendous performance.
In the Boys section, Anurag finished with 8 points and in 14th place. At one stage he was 4 points after four rounds and in the joint lead. Nevertheless, this is a creditable showing by the student of Akash Thakur of Maharashtra. He finished ahead of Asian Under 12 Champion Girish Kaushik of Karnataka which goes to show the relative strength of this highly competitive tournament.
Next up for Woman Candidate Master Ivana will be the prestigious Singapore Open and the Malaysian Open tournament next month. She will be accompanied by her coach Woman Grandmaster Aarthie Ramesh and we can expect another terrific performance from her!
Other Goan participants (with points tally and final placing) Girls Sampada Barve 5.5 pts 64th place Riya Sawant 5.5 pts 66th place Boys Niraj Saripalli 7.5 pts 31st place Pranav Zantye 6.5 pts 68th place Anirudh V. Bhat 6.5 pts 77th place SOURCE: Sameer Salgaocar - Vice President, All-India Chess Federation
