Indian women rout Switzerland

Displaying rare consistency, the Indian men earned a 2-2 draw against Croatia while the women came back strongly and blanked Switzerland 3-0 in the sixth round of the 34th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul on Thursday.

The lead positions remained unchanged as most of the games ended in 2-2 draws on top tables in the men's section.

Thus, Germany continued their one point lead over the fancied Russians with 18.5 points in their kitty. Slovakia is on third spot with 17 points.

The Indians are performing much above expectations and have garnered 15.5 points from their six outings. They are tied in the 8 to 17 spots.

In the women's section, China continue to top the tables on 14 points after settling for a 1.5-1.5 draw against Georgia (13 points). Moldova joined Georgian on second position with a 3-0 victory over Kazakhstan.

The Indians have a lot of hard work to do as they are tied on the 15-21 spots with 11 points.

Draws were the order of the day on all Indian boards. On the top board GM Krishnan Sasikiran drew with GM Z Kozul in an exciting game with white pieces. Sasikiran opted for the classical set-up to counter the King's Indian defence and got a miniscule advantage after the opening. Kozul did well in the middle game to give his dark square Bishop some air on the c1-h6 diagonal and equalized with some creative play.

The draw was soon agreed to.

On the second board, GM Abhijit Kunte employed the Queen's Indian defence to hold GM Morovic Fernandez with black pieces.

An exponent of the system, Abhijit did not face any trouble in the opening. After blitzing out the opening, Fernandez sank in a long thought. The pawn sacrifice by him was temporary but the Indian champion deployed his pieces on the queenside to keep his position intact. The draw was a natural result.

On the third board GM Dibyendu Barua went for an all out win against GM Civitan but fell prey to a perfect defence that made the position double edged.

Earlier, Barua had ventured into familiar variations of the Sicilian Schveningen with white pieces. In the middle game, Barua sacrificed a pawn to initiate an attack against the king but agreed to draw seeing tactical resources of Civitan.

The fourth board saw IM Surya Sekhar Ganguly draw I Zaja to complete the all-draws result for his team.

WGM Vijayalakshmi played another fine game to get the better of B Hund of Switzerland. Playing white Viji played the Capablanca variation and slowly outplayed her opponent in a long drawn game that lasted 63 moves.

Vijayalakshmi's sister Meenakshi gave a perfect display of king power in her game against J Ramseier. With black pieces Minakshi equalized easily and then got the game transposed in to a favourable endgame for her. Her opponent failed to put up the correct defence and Meenakshi marched her king to the centre of the board to record a fine victory.