Air India women stayed on course to clinch the title with a fluent 3-1 win over Race Academy (Andhra Pradesh) in the sixth round of the National team chess championship here on Monday.
On the top board, IM Tania Sachdev dished out an lesson to young B. Pratyusha by sacrificing a rook for a knight on the 15th move to create a stronger c-file.
This saw the experienced player gain two pieces for the rook on the 26th move which eventually forced the Andhra girl to resign after 40 moves.
Air India has won all its matches, picking up 12 points. Airports Authority of India, with 10 points, is second.
In the men’s event, PSPB won its seventh straight match, outsmarting Maharashtra 3-1 to continue to be the leader with 14 points.
The results:
Men: Seventh round: PSPB bt Maharashtra 3-1 (Abhijeet Gupta bt Sagar Shah; B. Adibhan bt Atul Dahale; S.P. Sethuraman bt Snehal Bhosale; Deep Sen Gupta drew with Sohan Phadke); Indian Railways ‘A’ drew with Indian Railways ‘B’ 2-2 (Swapnil Dhopade drew with M.S. Thejkumar; Arghyadip Das drew with Himanshu Sharma; R.R. Laxman drew with Akshat Kamparia; Saptarshi Roy Choudary drew with K. Ratnakaran); Tamil Nadu ‘B’ lost to LIC 1.5-2.5 (M. Vinoth Kumar lost to Anup Deshmukh; R.A. Pradeep Kumar drew with Sriram Jha; S. Ram Krishnan lost to Atanu Lahiri; D.S. Shashank bt K. Dinesh Sharma); Airports Authority of India bt Kerala 3-1 (V. Vishnu Prasanna bt O.T. Anil Kumar; G.A. Stany bt S.R. Harikrishna; V.A.V. Rajesh drew with Joy Antony; S. Nitin drew with K. Arjun); Air India bt Andhra Bank 3.5-0.5 (S. Satyapragyan drew with M. Vinay Kumar; Chandrasekhar Gokhale bt J. Ramakrishna; Rahul Shetty bt K.V. Subrahmanyam; G.B. Joshi bt P. Kamalakar).
Women: Sixth round: Air India bt Race Academy (AP) 3-1 (Tania Sachdev bt B. Pratyusha; Bhakti Kulkarni drew with Ch. Sahajasri; S. Vijayalakshmi bt Hinduja Reddy; Aarthie Ramaswamy drew with A. Kavya); Goa lost to AAI 0-4 (Aditee Prabhugoankar lost to Mary Ann Gomes; Krystal Fernandez lost to Padmini Rout; Gauri Keshav lost to Nimmy George; Urvi Bandekar lost to R. Bharathi); Bihar lost to PSPB 0-4 (Smita Choudhary lost to Rucha Pujari; Pallavi lost to Nisha Mohota; Amrita Choudhary lost to M. Mahalakshmi; Khushboo Singh lost to Catherina Michelle); Tamil Nadu bt Gujarat 4-0 (V. Varshini bt Jigna Joshi; R. Vaishali bt Akanksha Shah; S. Bharkavi bt Vrushali Jagtap; S.V. Sathya Priya bt Anila Shah).
