Padmini Rout is well-placed along with four foreigners atop of the points' table after seven rounds in the LIC World Junior Chess Championships, being played at Hotel Hyatt, in Pune. With six rounds left in the tough 13-round Swiss league event, the players in both sections are tightly bunched, making the hunt for the title quite open.
Padmini Rout's unbeaten run was halted by top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina in the eighth round of the LIC World Junior Chess Championships, at the Hotel Hyatt, in Pune, on Tuesday. After a day's rest, the girls' section was dominated by the higher-rated Russians in the fray, with Daria Pustovoitova defeating Anna Iwanow of Poland. Both the Russian girls and Anna Iwanow of Peru jointly lead the girls' section in the 77-player event with 6.5 points each.
S L Narayanan, a regular visitor to Pune for the Maharashtra Chess League, has a reputation for shocking seeded players. On Thursday, in the fourth round of the LIC World Junior Chess championships, at the Hotel Hyatt, the teenager from Kerala played true to his reputation and stunned Polish Grandmaster Kamil Dragun.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Friday
Indian Grandmasters Vidit Gujrathi and S P Sethuraman placed themselves for a medal contention as they defeated Jorge Cori of Peru and Vladislav Kovalev of Belarus respectively in the 12th and penultimate round of World Juniors Chess Championship.