World Youth Olympiad Round 9: India Red beats Russia!

Russia wins the Gold, India Green take home the silver

The news of the day is that Russia, who had already won the gold medal with one round to spare, slumped to their first defeat against India Red! The Russian team had a perfect score with 16.0/16. Going into the last round sixth seeded India Red had only 10.0 points out of 16. "We were quite tensed, as a loss would push us out of top ten finish," says Mitrabha Guha, board number four of India Red. No one gave the Indian team a chance to beat the mighty Russians. But they proved all the detractors wrong by winning the match with a score of 2.5-1.5. 

The floodgates were opened when Arjun Erigiasi won a 23-move miniature against Timur Fakhrutdinov. Perhaps, the Russian player resigned a bit too soon, but playing on would have just prolonged the suffering. It was a fine win for the soft-spoken boy from Tanjore.

Jayakumaar made a quick draw against Lobanov. Rajdeep lost on the top board against Lomasov. The onus was now on Mitrabha's shoulders to bring home the full point. He was facing Alexandra Obolentseva. Mitrabha played an exciting game and his opponent blundered under time pressure.

The loss was a moral victory for the India Red team and it also helped them to finish fifth. For Russians it didn't matter as they still go back home with the gold, but it would have been nice to go home unbeaten. The way things stand no team in the tournament remained unbeaten.

India Green team played a fine final round against Kazakhstan. Aryan Chopra was rested for the last game. Pragg played on the top board and drew his game. Nihal was able to fool his opponent and bring home the full point. Iniyan continued his amazing form and won his game and Vaishali also ensured that she won on the final board. A thoroughly convincing 3.5-0.5 victory over Kazakhstan.

P. Iniyan scored 7.5/8 on board four for the India green team and won the individual gold. At the same time he helped the team secure a silver medal. He was thoroughly pleased with his 94.7% score. In examinations in school he scores something around 60% (after just 2 days of studying). This is something that he would like to keep rather than excelling at studies and letting his chess results go down!

Results of round 9:

Final rankings:

The closing ceremony begins at 5.00 p.m. IST and ChessBase India will bring you a separate report on that.