Oshini wins bronze in Girls’ Under-10
Ardra
Oshini Devinya Gunawardena of the Ferguson High School, Kandy won a bronze medal at the Asian Youth Online Girls Under-10 Chess Championship 2021 last Sunday. Oshini, being the World Youth Online Girls Under-10 champion, dropped 1½ points early in first four rounds, but managed to recover by winning all other games.
Arundi
She scored a total of 7½ points out of possible 9 games to win the third place. She beat Indians Deysarka Genessa, Anaisha Pinkesh, Pratyasa Jena, Aadhya Jain and N. Pavithra, Ann Le Minh of Vietnam and Zol Uchral Erdeneseikhan of Mongolia. She drew with Singapore’s Vinai Advika and recorded her only loss against Anshika Dongre of India to bag the bronze medal.
Arundi Beminiwatte of Defence College, Colombo, was in fact unlucky since she lost her seventh round game in Under-10 Girls’ event due to a failure of internet connection while she was leading the event. Finally she scored 7 points and was placed seventh on the tie-breaker after tying with three other players.
Sanudula Dahamdi of Musaeus College played strongly and became the sole leader in the Under-14 Girls’ event after the penultimate round. But she could not complete her task. She lost her final game to Nguyen Le Cam of Vietnam, who won the silver medal. Finally Sanudula tied for the third place with 7 points but had to satisfy with the fourth place on tie-breaking points.
Sanidula
Oshini
Esnadi Newansa of Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda, also had a good score of 6 points after the penultimate round but lost in the final round and was placed 15th in the Under-12 Girls’ category.
Ardra Pradeepkumar of Gateway College, Badulla also performed well in the Under-8 Girls’ event to score 7 points out of 9 games. After a poor start, losing two games in first three rounds, she managed to win six games in-a-row to finish at fifth place.
The Asian Youth Chess Championships 2021 is the most prestigious chess tournament in Asia for the youth players. The Indian Chess Federation organised the event on behalf of the Asian Chess Federation this year. More than 1000 players registered for this event which was held according to the Swiss System on ‘Tornelo’ platform. The time control was 15 minutes and an increment of 10 seconds per each move played. A total of nine rounds were played in each category.
