Murali, Monnisha emerge National champions

Second seeds Murali Karthikeyan and G K Monnisha emerge champions in boys and girls categories, respectively at the National Sub-Junior Chess Championship here today.
IM Karthikeyan and local favourite IM Diptayan Ghosh, the top seed, finished with nine points each, but the Tamil Nadu lad won the tiebreaker 75-74 to clinch the honours.
In the final round, Diptayan kept his cool to beat Vignesh Nr in 53 moves on the top board.
But his win was not enough as Karthikeyan got the better of his state mate Pranav Vijay in an intriguing battle of 68 to take the final battle to the tiebreaker where the Tamil Nadu lad edged past the local favourite by a slender one-point margin.

However, in the girls section, it was an one-sided affair for WFM G K Monnisha who emerged on top with nine points after an equally intense win over state mate WFM R Vaishali.
The battle stretched till 55 moves before Monnisha, who recently qualified for the Women's Premier Championship, settled the issue.

The winners in both the sections took home INR 22,000 each while 16,000 each were given to the runners-up.
Standings (Top 10)
Boys: 1 IM Murali Karthikeyan (TN); 2 IM Diptayan Ghosh (WB); 3 B Kumaran (TN); 4 FM Arvindh Chithambaram (TN); 5 Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh (Mah); 6 Naresh Rishubh Naik (Goa); 7 Sidhant Mohapatra (Odi); 8 Harsha Bharathakoti (AP); 9 Pranav Vijay (TN); 10 Vignesh Nr (TN).

Girls: 1 WFM G K Monnisha (TN); 2 WFM M Mahalakshmi (TN); 3 V Varshini (TN); 4 C H Meghna (Ker); 5 R Gayetri (TN); 6 WFM R Vaishali (TN); 7 WCM Riya Savant (Goa); 8 Dhanashree Pandit (Mah); 9 Shiny Das (Tri); 10 Divya Garg (Mah).
Results (Round 11)
Boys: IM Diptayan Ghosh (9) b Vignesh Nr (7.5); IM Murali Karthikeyan (9) b Pranav Vijay (7.5); Kumaran B (8+0.5) drew Naresh Rishubh Naik (8); Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh (8) b Sidhant Mohapatra (7.5); Ajay Krishna (7) lost to FM Aravindh Chithambaram (8); Rajdeep Sarkar (7.5) drew Harsha Bharathakoti (7.5); FM Mitrabha Guha (7.5) drew Anshuman K (7.5); Visakh Nr (7.5) b N Krishna Teja (7); Ritviz Parab (7.5) b Shailesh Dravid (6.5); Saurabh Anand (7) drew Al Muthaiah (7); Aradhya Garg (7.5) b Satvik M (6.5); Rohit Vassan (6.5) lost to FM Rakesh Jena (7.5); Nishant Kumar (6.5) lost to Harikrishnan (7.5); Karthik Ap (7) b Koustav Chatterjee (6.5); Rohan Ahuja (7) b Subhasis Barik (6).

Girls: WFM G K Monnisha (9) b WFM R Vaishali (7.5); WFM M Mahalakshmi (8.5) b Smaraki Mohanty (7); V Varshini (8) drew Dhanashree Pandit (7.5); R Gayetri (8) b Rutuja Bakshi (7); C H Meghna (8) b R Divya Lakshmi (7); Hilmi Parveen (6.5) lost to WCM Riya Savant (7.5); Saloni Sapale (7) drew U Ashwini (7); Shiny Das (7.5) b Bhagya Jayesh (6.5); R Dharani Sree (6.5) lost to WFM Arpita Mukherjee (7); WCM Tejaswini Sagar (6.5) drew Khushi Dharewa (6.5); Sunyasakta Satpathy (7) b Asmita Das (6); Harshita Guddanti (6) lost to Potluri Saye Srreezza (7); Divya Garg (7) b Jasper Jothi P (6); Meghna Upadhyay (7) b P Thamaraiselvi (6); Sanskriti Goyal (6) lost to D Meera (6.5).