Subtle psychology does play an important part in chess, and Mary Ann Gomes tried and tested it successfully against top seed Atousa Pourkashiyan in the fourth round of the Asian Junior Girls' chess championship at the Goregaon Sports Club here on Sunday.
This enabled Mary to score her fourth victory on the trot and maintain her slender half-a-point lead over Padmini Rout. Five more rounds remain to be played in this 38-player Swiss League event. Two Iranians and a lone Bangladeshi player in fray have failed to make their presence felt, while the Indians continued to dominate the event.
"I was aware that Atousa is a positional player and hence decided to try the dynamic 'King's Gambit' on the suggestion of IM Deep Sengupta. This probably rattled Atousa to such as extent that she went haywire from the Opening stages itself," revealed a delighted Mary.
Padmini, the 13-year-old from Bhubaneshwar, played a fine game to score over Krutika Nadig while Soumya Swaminathan was a trifle lucky to escape with a draw against S Harini.
Vishnu Prasanna also scored his fourth consecutive victory to enjoy sole lead in the open section. He defeated T Purushothaman, while Snehal Bhosale, the other overnight leader, ended on the losing side against Deep Sengupta. Sengupta and B Adhiban are trailing just half-a-point behind Prasanna.
Mary's opening choice had Atouse pondering from the start even as she decided not to accept the early gambitted pawn. The King's Gambit, which belongs to the so called 'Romantic Era' (about 200 years ago), does make an occasional appearance at top level events once in a while. Improving her position at the slightest opportunity had Mary racing ahead on her clock. At one stage, Atousa had just 20 minutes to her opponent's one hour and 20 minutes on the clock. Mary won a pawn and then the game on the 43rd turn.
Results (Round 4):
Open: Vishnu Prasanna (4) bt T Purushothaman (3); Snehal Bhosale (3) lt to Deep Sengupta (3.5); B Adhiban (3.5) bt Shyam Sundar (2.5); Lalith Babu (3) drew P Karthikeyan (3); S Nitin (2.5) lt to Parimarjan Negi (3); Ashwin Jayram (3) bt Swapnil Dhopade (2); Sagar Shah (2.5) drew Javad Sayed Alavi (2.5); Sahaj Grover (3) bt S P Sethuraman (2); Rakesh Kulkarni (2) lt to Aditya Udeshi (3); Meghan Gupte (3) bt Debashis Das (2).
Girls: Mary Ann Gomes (4) bt Atousa Pourkashiyan (2.5); Padmini Rout (3.5) bt Krutika Nadig (2.5); S Harini (2.5) drew Soumya Swaminathan ( 2.5); Kiran Manisha Mohanty (2.5) bt Shamina Liza Akhtar (2); Pon Krutika (2.5) bt Tara Rahimi (1.5); P Priya (2.5) bt Mitali Patil (1.5); P Uthra (2) bt Mohana Priya (1); Sriharika (0.5) lt to P Sivasankari (2); Bhakti Juikar (1) drew Sonakshi Rathore ( 0.5).
