State, national chess tournaments overlap, top seed Mrudul skips one

Nagpur, July 23

Just two days back WIM Mrudul Dehankar emerged champion in Maharashtra Chess Association's State Senior Women Online Chess Tournament. For her title-winning performance, she also received a cash prize of Rs 10,000 . She was also the title contender in Under-20 (Junior) section but unfortunately, she had to skip the tournament to participate in the nationals. She had to suffer only because of the lack of coordination between All India ChessFederation (AICF) and MCA.

Top seed Mrudul (2256 ELO Rating) started the Maharashtra State Under-20 Online ChessTournament on a positive note winning all first four rounds but as the national tournament clash with state event she had to skip it after four rounds. In first run she got the better of Ojal Anbilwade, followed by victories over Kritika Tendulkar, Shruti Rathi and Mrunmayee Gotmare.

The AICF Senior Women National Tournament also started on Thursday and will conclude on Saturday.

So far in the first six rounds Mrudul fared well and secured four points. In the opening round, Mrudul started her campaign on a winning note defeating Aaiba Ullah of Bihar. Then she recorded consecutive victories over Smaraki Mohanty (Odisha) and G Sandhya (Andhra Pradesh). However, in the fourth round Tamil Nadu girl PV Nidhi halted her winning streak. But in the fifth round Mrudul bounced back and won the round against Samruddha Ghosh of West Bengal. In the sixth round Mrudul again lost the momentum and as a result, suffered defeat at the hands of Nimmy AG of Kerala.

Had both AICF and MCA tournament's not clashed, Mrudul would have walked away with another titie. In this regard when contacted the secretary of MCA Dhananjay Godbole he said, " The schedule of online tournament is so much packed that we can't do anything."

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'No regret in skipping state tournament'

The parents of Mrudul said she has no regret of skipping state tournament for nationals. " Actually both AICF and state body should avoid overlapping of the tournaments. But its ok. We talked with AICF authorities and pointed out that both junior state and senior women national tournaments are overlapping but they expressed their inability. Secondly, the positive thing is that being a state champion Mrudul is getting an opportunity to play in the senior national directly and that too with highly-rated players. She is also participating in the junior national beginning on July 26".