Cuddalore :

A 13-year-old girl from Neyveli, Cuddalore district, clinched silver medal in the Asian youth chess championship held at Tashkent, Uzbekistan. L Jyothsna overcame stiff competition from players from 13 countries, to finish second in the under 14 girls’ category in the Asian event.

This is her maiden medal in an Asian event in which she lost a round, drew two and won six. She also clinched bronze medal in the Blitz chess championship and finished fifth in the Rapid chess championship of the same meet. Another girl from India, D Jishitha from Andhra Pradesh, who lost a round, drew one and won seven, clinched the gold medal.

Nurgali Nazerke from Kazakhstan, who lost two rounds, drew three and won four rounds, had to be content with the bronze medal. Indian players fared better in championships, topping the medals tally with 12, followed by the host nation (Uzbekistan) with 10 medals.

A Class 7 student of St Joseph of Cluny matriculation higher secondary school, Neyveli, Jyothsna was selected to represent the country in her category for the second time in an Asian event after her stellar performance in the national level chess championship organised by the All India Chess Federation at Ahmedabad in 2016, where she bagged the bronze. She could not make a mark at her maiden appearance at the 2016 Asian championship at Mongolia in which another Indian Divya Deshmukh bagged the title in her category.

After a disappointing performance in the 2016 Asian championship where she finished fourth she was determined to fare well in this year Asian event. A positional player she played exceptionally well overcoming the attacking game of others and secured silver medal. We are happy about her performance and hope she will improve by leaps and bounds in the seasons to come,” said her father K Lakshminarayanan, an executive engineer at the NLC India Limited, while appreciating the company for sponsoring her expenses.

Jyothsna, whose highest ranking was number two in her category in the country, has been consistently performing well at the national events, winning bronze medal in 2015 (under-11) at Puducherry and finishing fifth in 2013 (under-9) at Chennai, besides bagging last year’s national bronze medal. She had also bagged gold medal (under-11) in the 2015 state level chess championship at Nagappatinam and silver medal (under-13) in the 2013 state level chess championships at Nagercoil.

Her only ambition is to become a woman grandmaster. “There are seven women grandmasters in the country. I would like to play more open tournaments so that I can face many grandmasters and consistently defeat them to achieve my dream. I have been training more than six hours a day for the last two years,” Jyothsna said.

Her coach and NLC India Limited deputy chief manager (sports development centre) Fide master A Pavanasam said Jyothsna is a passive but very solid player. “She does not want to lose and hence tends to play for a draw. We are trying to mould her into an attacking player, which will bear more fruits,” Pavanasam said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Chennai News / by Bosco Dominique / TNN / April 27th, 2017