Mamallapuram, Aug 3:
India’s top player Koneru Humpy and R Vaishali led the women’s ‘A’ team to a 3-1 win over a strong Georgian side in the sixth round of the 44th Chess Olympiad here on Wednesday.
In the Open section, teenaged Grandmaster D Gukesh’s splendid run continued as he notched up a sixth consecutive win, but India ‘B’ went down 1.5-2.5 to former champions Armenia.
He put it across Gabriel Sargissian but could not prevent the team from going down as B Adhiban and Raunak Sadhwani suffered defeats at the hands of Samvel Ter-Sahakyan and Robert Hovhannisyan respectively. Nihal Sarin drew his match against Hrant Melkumyan.
It was the formidable India ‘B’ team’s first loss in the competition.
The India ‘C’ team recorded an emphatic 3.5-0.5 win over Lithuania as S P Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta and Abhimanyu Puranik beat their opponents and the experienced Surya Shekhar Ganguly drew against Titas Stremavicius.
The star-studded India ‘A’ team, seeded two in the Open section, had to share honours with Uzbekistan in a 2-2 draw. A win for the experienced P Harikrishna over the talented Doribek Abdusattorov was offset by a loss for K Sasikiran against Shamsiddin Vokhidov.
Vidit Gujrathi drew on the second board as did Arjun Erigaisi on the third.
In the women’s section, Humpy defeated Nana Dzagnidze in 42 moves, Vaishali scored a win over Lela Javakhshvilli, while D Harika and Tania Sachdev settled for draws against Nino Batsiashvili and Salome Melia in the clash between the top-seeded India ‘A’ and No.3 seeds Georgia.
Humpy was pleased with the result and said, “I am not thinking of medals at this stage of the tournament as we still have to play many more tough teams like Ukraine and so on.
“Our team spirit is high and whenever in need of a victory, always any one player from the team would shine.”
Abhijit Kunte, the ‘A’ team coach, commented, “It is a very important win against Georgia, more so as we head into a rest day tomorrow. (PTI)
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