World Juniors 2018 Round 2: Karthikeyan, Aravindh, Harsha and Karthik on 2.0/2

by Sagar Shah - 07/09/2018

After two rounds of the World Junior Championships 2018 we have four Indian players who are on 2.0/2. They are GMs Aravindh Chithambaram, Karthikeyan Murali, Karthik Venkatraman and IM Harsha Bharathakoti. Abhimanyu Puranik, S.L. Narayanan, Nubairshah Shaikh are on 1.5/2. In the girls section we have Sakshi Chitlange, Ivana Maria Furtado and M. Mahalakshmi who are all on 1.5/2. The tournament is heating up and 7th of September will be double rounds. For now we bring you an interview with Karthikeyan Murali on how he was able to outplay his strong IM opponent from the black side of the two-knights Tango.

Check out the summary video of round two by IM Sagar Shah

Everyday the Indian team has to travel from Hotel Lamec to the playing hall in a bus. It takes roughly 20 minutes. Some prefer to relax, while others talk to each other! | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Karthikeyan Murali won his second round against Barseghyan Harutyun | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Karthikeyan used some of his psychological tricks to outplay his strong opponent | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Karthikeyan speaks about his win and also the strong Iranian players

Aravindh Chithambaram showed some very good positional understanding and outplayed his opponent from the black side of the King's Indian Defence | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Abhimanyu showed great skills of resistance and drew the game in spite of being a piece down for two pawns | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Ivana Maria Furtado tried to attack her opponent in a creative manner. She did succeed to some extent, but in the end had to defend a worse endgame for many moves before the point was split. A good fighting game by the youngster. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Performance of Indian players after round 2:

SNo		Name	Rtg	FED	1	2	Pts.	Rk.	Group
4	GM	Karthikeyan Murali	2605	IND	1	1	2,0	21	Open
10	GM	Aravindh Chithambaram Vr.	2578	IND	1	1	2,0	12	Open
13	GM	Sunilduth Lyna Narayanan	2573	IND	1	½	1,5	31	Open
23	GM	Puranik Abhimanyu	2524	IND	1	½	1,5	28	Open
27	IM	Karthik Venkataraman	2519	IND	1	1	2,0	13	Open
40	IM	Harsha Bharathakoti	2474	IND	1	1	2,0	17	Open
50	IM	Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh	2443	IND	½	1	1,5	45	Open
56	IM	Raja Harshit	2419	IND	1	0	1,0	71	Open
77	IM	Krishna Teja N	2356	IND	1	0	1,0	58	Open
94	FM	Shailesh Dravid	2325	IND	0	1	1,0	95	Open
12	WIM	Chitlange Sakshi	2279	IND	1	½	1,5	15	Girls
21	WIM	Mahalakshmi M	2213	IND	½	1	1,5	29	Girls
32	WIM	Varshini V	2173	IND	1	0	1,0	39	Girls
36	WIM	Ivana Maria Furtado	2144	IND	1	½	1,5	23	Girls
55	WCM	Isha Sharma	2012	IND	1	0	1,0	38	Girls
65		Meenal Gupta	1963	IND	½	0	0,5	76	Girls

7th of September is a double round and rounds three and four would be played on that day.

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