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This story is from October 16, 2006

Eesha finishes fifth in World Junior chess

Eesha Karavade finished fifth after drawing her final game with Mongontuul Bathuyag in the final round of the World Junior Girls' chess championship.
Eesha finishes fifth in World Junior chess
YEREVAN (ARMENIA), Oct 16: Woman Grandmaster Eesha Karavade finished fifth after drawing her final game with Mongontuul Bathuyag of Mongolia in the 13th and final round of the World Junior Girls' chess championship that concluded.
WGM Shen Yang of China won the gold after coming out with a brilliant performance against WGM D Harika in the final game.
It turned out to be a four-way tie at the top between Shen Yang, her compatriot Hou Yifan, Bathuyag and Melia Salome of Georgia who all scored an identical 9 points from 13 games played here.
The tiebreaker confirmed Shen Yang's victory as she had played the best opposition here. The silver went to Yifan while Salome won the bronze medal for her efforts. Despite leading in the first half and the only one here to beat Shen Yang and hou Yifan, Bathuyag had to be content with the fourth place.
Eesha ended on 8.5 points for the fifth spot where she had company of compatriot Mary Ann Gomes, Atousa Pourkashiyan of Iran Anna Rudolf of Hungary. Amongst the 8.5 pointers Mary was most impressive in the final round cruising past Diana Arutyunova of Ukraine.
Out of seven in the fray, four Indian girls found themselves in the top ten bracket with Harika and WGM Tania Sachdev finishing 9th and 10th respectively. Soumya Swaminathan and Kruttika Nadig ended their stint on 7 points while P Priya finsihed on 6 points.
In the open section that concluded simultaneously, International Master Zaven Andriasian of Armenia annexed the title after taking a draw with Grandmaster levan Pantsulaia of Georgia.

The Armenian scored 9.5 points in all and remained half a point adrift of nearest contenders Pantsulaia, Nikita Vitiugov of Russia and Yuriy Kryvoruchko of Ukriane.
After the ties were resolved, Vitiugov got the silver while Kryvoruchko won the bronze. It turned out to be another mediocre performance for the Indian boys as Grandmaster Deepan Chakravarthy was held to a draw by Sergei Matsenko of Russia, birthday boy Abhijeet Gupta signed peace with Le Quang Liem of Vietnam and Rahul Sangma achieved the same result in quick time against Daan Brandenburg of Holland.
GM norm holder Deep Sengupta ended on the losing side against Li Chao of China. Amongst four Indians in the fray here both Abhijeet and Deepan ended on 7 points while the remaining two were a half point behind.
Despite trying hard, Eesha could not squeeze out the defensive resources of Bathuyag who played white. Opting for the Sicilian Nazdorf Eesha was up against the English attack and it was a tense battle right from the word go.
When the middle game surfaced Bathuyag declared her peaceful intentions by going for the repetition but Eesha relentlessly tried even at the cost of getting a worse position.
However, in the endgame the pawns got traded at regular intervals and the draw was agreed to after 49 moves. Harika was the other Indian in with a chance to win the medal but she could not match the guile of Shen Yang who played a finely crafted game in the Slav Chelyabinsk variation. "I just played badly today and it was a one sided game", said Harika who was unbeaten till the final day.
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