Padmini Rout wins Bronze in World Jr Chess Championship

Poland: Woman Grandmaster Padmini Rout was the lone Indian to sign off with a medal when she notched up the bronze after drawing her 13th and final round game with Deysi Cori of Peru in the World Junior Girls` Chess Championship.

Scoring 10 points, Padmini, who still has a few years left to play in the world juniors, had beaten Alisa Melekhina of United States in the penultimate round. The gold medal was won by top seed and hot favourite for the crown Anna Muzychuk of Slovenia, who scored another fine victory at the expense of Ekaterini Pavlidou of Greece. Anna scored a whopping 11 points in all and finished half a point clear of Olga Girya of Russia who was held to a draw by Irina Andrenko of Ukraine. In the open championship being played simultaneously, Dmitry Andreikin of Russia won the gold medal ahead of compatriot Sanan Sjugirov. Settling for draws in contrasting fashion in the final round, both Andreikin and Sanan finished with an identical score of 10 points out of a possible 13 but the tie-break of the former was always superior.The bronze medal went to Darius Sweircz of Poland who had the best tie-break score among four nine pointers. Indian hope Parimarjan Negi finished the tournament with a draw against Maxim Matlakov of Russia. Negi finished 11th in the tournament after scoring 8.5 points in all and was the best Indian performer. Among other Indians in fray, S P Sethuraman finished 32nd on 7.5 points while Swapnil Dhopade was a few places behind on the same score. Debashish Das, Anwesh Upadhyaya and Sagar Shah ended the event on seven points each while M R Lalith Babu, AR Arun Karthik and Ashwin Jayaram had an identical 6.5 points each.Among the other Indian girls, Bhakti Kulkarni did well to finish fifth on nine points while B Pratuyusha ended on 6.5 points in all. PTI