Press Trust of India
Al Ain, August 5: It was a very poor day for Orissa as both Padmini Rout and Debashis Das lost their matches in the women’s and open category respectively at the Asian Continental Chess Championships here Wednesday.
Padmini, who held the top spot after two rounds, suffered a shock defeat against Atousa Pourkashiyan of Iran in round three. She remained on two points and will have to do a catch-up act now in this eight-round tournament
Debashis’ performance went from bad to worse as he was checkmated by Yuan Qingyu of China. He is now languishing at the bottom of the table with one point from two draws.
However, Indian Grandmasters Surya Shekhar Ganguly and V Vishnu Prasanna emerged as joint leaders with a perfect score of three points each, after the end of the third round.
Day to forget
Orissa players failed to live up to their reputations as all bar Saina Salonika lost their third round matches Wednesday in the third round of the Asian Youth Chess Championships at Suwon, South Korea,
Saina played out a draw to share the top spot along with six others with 2.5 points in the U-12 girls’ category. She shared points with Akshaya Bomini Monika in a tight contest.
In the U-10 open category, Mahitosh Dey lost to Sindarov Javokhir while Vaibhav Mishra’s bad form continued as he was outwitted by V Pranavananda in the U-18 open category. In another match Smaraki Mohanty went down to Nhung Doan Thi Hong.
Amrutjay, Kabir in semis
Top seed Amrutjay Mohanty and third seed Kabir Hans of Orissa entered the semifinals of the U-14 boys’ singles category in the AITA-OTA Talent Series tennis tournament at the Kalinga Stadium here, Wednesday. Amrutjay thrashed statemate and seventh seed Abhisek Mohapatra 6-0, 6-2. Kabir prevailed over Kirtan Sharma of Assam 6-0, 6-3.
Badminton tourney
Orissa Badminton Association (OBA) will organise the State Badminton Championships in Angul September 2-6. Players from all district associations are eligible to participate in the competition, which will have eight categories.
