Sevenenth consecutive victory for Padmini Rout

Padmini Rout of India scored her seventh consecutive victory to remain alone at the top at the end of the seventh round of the Asian Junior Girls’ Chess Championship in Colombo, Sri Lanka today. Ashwin Jayaram, also of India dropped half a point for the first time in the tournament to his Kazakhstan opponent Amanov Zhanibek. He has secured 6.5 points and still managed to stay one point ahead of Amanov and M.R. Lalith Babu, another international master from India.

With two more rounds to go and having met most of the strong players, it may not be a problem for Padmini to capture the tile. The game between Ashwin and Lalith Babu will be crucial in the penultimate round and Ashwin, the defending champion has an edge over the last year runner up Lalith. In the girls section, Hejazipour Mitra of Iran and Soumya Swaminathan of India are on the second and third spot with 6 and 5 points