Round 2 - TOP SEEDS IN BOTH SECTIONS HELD TO DRAWS BY LOWER RATED OPPONENTS

If the general perception in chess circles is that the first couple of rounds of a Swiss League event produce perfectly predictable results in favour of high Ratings, then players at the on-going World Junior Chess Championship at Hotel Hyatt are determined to prove it wrong!. After a spate of upsets in the first round, it was no different in the second round played on Tuesday as the seeded players found it difficult to score the expected victories.

The tournament Hall was buzzing with excitement as hot favourites and the top two seeds, Vladimir Fedoseev of Russia and Robin Van Kampen of Netherland were held to a draw by Daniel Bogdan Deac and Jinshi Bai of China respectively. In the Girls section also defending Champion and top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina was held to a draw by Maria Gevorgyan of Armenia.

Indians contenders for the titles Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and Padmini Rout however notched their second successive victories in their respective sections. Padmini carved an easy victory while Vidit had to bring all his expertise and experience to the fore front against compatriot Vignesh Nr in a hard fought tussle lasting 60 moves . 10-year-old Nihal Sarin who created a sensational upset yesterday, created another flutter today when he held higher ranked and rated IM Tadeas Kriebel to a draw in another marathon game lasting 88 moves. 16 players are leading tournament with two points and apart from Vidit include other Indians Sahej Grover, Ankit Rajpara, Diptayan Ghosh , Shardul Gagare, S L Narayanan, Sayantan Das

In the Girls section 11 players share lead and apart from Padmini, the other Indians in lead are Ivana Maria Furtado, Pratyusha Bodda and Nandhidhaa Pv.

The event has garnered lot of attention as it is one of the toughest ever in terms of Rating strength. The Government of Maharashtra and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) are the main sponsors while ONGC, Amanora, Jain Irrigation and Everstone are the associate sponsors. Padmini the petite, curly haired Orissa based player, wielding Whites today latched onto an early inaccuracy in the Sicilian defence adopted by Tihana Ivekovic of Croatia to launch a whirlwind attack. Her King-side pawns were pushed aggressively and her queen, knight , bishop and rook were soon swarming around her opponent's King, threatening to weave a check-mating net. Tihana could avert check-mate by managing the exchange of queens and other pieces but left Padmini with a winning ending, one which the Indian had no difficulty in converting into a win after 43 moves. Later Padmini revealed "She allowed me too many attacking possibilities in the Opening and thereafter things were easy ". GM Van Kampen Robin of Netherland was held to a draw by Jinshi Bai of China. The players battled it out in a Sicilian defence for 26 moves and sealed the draw by repetition of moves.

Prince Bajaj of India also performed creditably to draw against sixth ranked Polish GM Karen Duda Jan-Krzysztof (2599).